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STIRPICULTURE; 



OR, 



THE IMPROVEMENT ()\ : OFFSPRING THROUGH 
WISER QENERATION. 



By M. L. HOLBROOK, M. D., 

. uf "Tin: JOUBNAL OF BYGIKNB," AUTHOB ok "HYGIENE 
OF THK BRAIN," u HO* 'i 9 | STRENGTHEN THB MEMOH 

"ADV 01 niAsTITV." 1 



New Yoke : 

M. L. HOLBBOOK A I 0. 

London : 

I.. N. FOWLEB A CO. 

1897. 






Copyright by 

M. L. Holbrook. 

1807. 



Entered at Stationers' Hall. 



PREFACE. 



During all ages since man came to himself, there have 
been enlightened ones seeking to improve the race. The 
methods proposed have been various, and in accordance 
with the knowledge and development of th«- time in which 
they have appeared. Some have believed that education 
and environment were all-sufficient ; others that absti- 
nence from intoxicating drinks would Buffice. A very 
considerable number have held the idea that by prenatal 
culture alone the mother can mould her unborn child into 
any desired form. The disciples of Darwin, many of 
them, have held that natural and sexual selection have 
been the chief factors employed by nature to bring about 
race improvement. 

No doubt all these factors have been more or less effect- 
ual, but the time has come for man to take special inter* st 
in his own evolution, to study and apply, so far as possi- 
ble, all the factors that will in any way promote race im- 
provement. In the past this has not been done. We are 
not yet able to do it perfectly, our knowledge is too de- 
ficient, lack of interest is too universal, but we can make 
a beginning; greater thoughtfulness may be given to 



suitable marriages ; improved euvironmeut may be se- 
cured; better hygienic conditions taken advantage of; 
food may be improved; the knowledge we have gained in 
improving animals and plants, so far as applicable, may 
aid us; air, exercise, water, employment, social conditions, 
wealth and poverty, prenatal conditions, all have an in- 
fluence on offspring, and man should be able, to some 
extent, to make them all tell to the advantage of future 
generations. 

Whatever the conditions of -existence, man is able by 
his intellect to modify and improve them, and make them 
Favorably serve unborn children. 

Herbert Spencer says: "On observing what energies 
are expended by father and mother to attain worldly suc- 
cesses and fulfil social ambition, we are reminded how 
relatively small is the space occupied by their ambition 
to make their descendants physically, morally and in- 
tellectually superior. Yet this is the ambition which will 
replace those they now so eagerly pursue, and which, in- 
d of perpetual disappointments, will bring permanent 
satisfaction-" 

If the chapters included in this volume should help to 
arouse in the minds of readers, and especially the younger 
portion of them, some healthy feelings relating to the im- 
provement of offspring it will have fulfilled its aim. 

Two of them have been given as lectures before 

the mam object of which was the discussion of 
subjects bearing on evolution and human pr and 

th»y are included in this volume because they have a 



close relation to the main subject, but the others were 
written especially for this work. 

While there may appear in a few cases a slight amount 
of repetition, the author trusts the reader will not con- 
sider it as unpardonable. 

With these few words I send the work on its mission 
hoping it will bear some fruit. 

M. L. H. 



CONTENTS. 



STIRPICULTURE. 

Ji :> 

Plato's Restrictions on Parentage ; Lycurgan Laws ; 
Plutarch on the Training of Children; Infanti- 
cide Among the Greeks; Group Marriage; Mak- 
ing Children the Property of the Stat* ; Grecian 
Methods Not Suitable to Our Time ; Sexual 
Selection; Difficulties in the Way; An Experi- 
ment in Stirpiculturc; Intermarriage ; Woman's 
Selective Action ; Man's and Woman's Co <>p< ra- 
tion ; The Individuals Eights; Spiritual Sym- 
pathy in Marriage; ...... 9 

PRENATAL CULTURE. 

Jacob's Flocks; An Illustrative Case; Beliefs of 
Primitive Peoples ; Birthmarks Hare; Why Chil- 
dren Resemble Parents; Life's Experience - \ : 
fecting Child; Germ plasm; Congenital Deform- 
ities; Psychical Disi Telegony; Power of 
Heredity ; Sobriety in the Father; S a of 
Parentage; Self-control; 55 



HEREDITY AND EDUCATION. 

Page. 

Theories ; Continuity of the Germ-plasm ; A Rational 
View of Heredity; Heredity and the Education 
of Children ; Intellectual Acquirements ; Instinct ; 
Knowledge or Heredity ; Individuality; Spectre 
of Heredity; 100 



EVOLUTION'S HOPEFUL PROHISE FOR A 
HEALTHIER RACE. 

Sexual Selection; Human Selection; Natural Selec- 
tion ; Conflict between Evolutionary Theories 
and our Humane Sentiments; Ideal of Health; 
Adaptation to Environment ; Knowledge ; Effects 
of Living at High Pressure; Girls in Manu- 
facturing Districts ; Co-operation : an Example ; 
Hygiene; 130 



THE GERM-PLASH; IT5 RELATION TO OFF- 
SPRING. 

What is the Germ -plasm? The Primitive Egg ; Fer- 
tilization of the Mother-cell Necessary to Pro- 
duce True Germ-plasm ; What Fertilization Does ; 
Its Process; Helps to Explain Heredity; Health 
of the Germ-plasm Necessary in Stirpiculture ; 
Surplus Vitality Necessary for Producing the 
Best Children; Duncan's Statistics as to Ages of 
Parents of Finec.o Children; Effects of Alcohol 
on Offspring ; Food and the Germ-plasm ; Effect 



8 






of Air and water on Germ-plasm; Effect of Dis- 
eas< a on Germ plasm; Every Child Born an Ex- 
periment ; . ... 1G2 

FEWER AND BETTER CHILDREN. 

Darwin's Opinions; Race Modifications by Natural 
Selection; Grant Allen's Views; Spencer's Views 
on Parental Duties; Limiting Offspring Among 
the Natives of Uganda; The Fijians; Children 
of Large Families often Superior to those in 
Small Families; Some Reasons for this. ; , , 179 

A THEORETICAL BABY. 

Our First Baby; ^Yo had Theories; What Some of 
Them Were ; My Wife's Love for Me ; My Senti- 
ments; The Child's Easy Birth; Mother's Rapid 
Convalescence: The Child's First Bath; Form- 
ing Good Habits Early; No Crying at Night; 
Never Hocked to Sleep; His Bed; Keeping the 
Stomach and Bowels Right; Colic, Irritability 
aud the Necessity for Diapers Eliminated; Num- 
ber of Meals Daily; The Infant's Clothing; At 
One Year Old; Teething Gives Little Trouble ; 
R( quires Considerable Water; Learning t<> Gr< i p, 
Stand, Walk and Talk by His Own Efforts; In- 
wiits His Own Amusements; Companionship 
With Parents; Mothering; Learning Self-con- 
trol; Obedience; Playmates : , . 184 



STIRPICULTURE. 



Natural selection, which is the central doctrine of 
Darwinism, has been explained as the " survival 
of the fittest." On this process has depended the 
progress observable throughout organic nature to 
which the term evolution is applied ; for, although 
there has been from time to time degradation, that 
is, a retrogression, this has had relation only to 
particular forms, organic life as a whole evidencing 
progress towards perfection. When man appeared 
as the culmination of evolution under terrestrial 
conditions, natural selection would seem almost to 
have finished its work, which was taken up, how- 
ever, by man himself, who was able by "artificial" 
selection to secure results similar to those which 
Nature had attained. This is true especially in rela- 
tion to animals, the domestication of which has al- 
ways been practiced by man, even while in a state 
of nature. Domestication is primarily a physical 
process, but it is attended with physical changes 
consequent on confinement and variation in food 
and habits. This alone would hardly account, how- 
ever, for the great number of varieties among ani- 



10 



mals that have been long domesticated, and it is 
probable thai actual " stirpiculture " has been 
practiced from very early times. This term is de- 
rived from the Latin stirpus, a stock or race, and 

cultus, culture or cultivation, and it means, there- 
fore, the cultivation of a stock or race, although it 
has come to be used in the sense of the "breeding 
of offspring," and particularly of human offspring. 
It is evident, however, that in relation to man this 
is too restricted a sense, and it must he extended so 
as to embrace as well the rearing and training as 
the breeding of children, in fact, cultivation in its 
widest sense, in which is always implied the idea of 
improvement. 

Stirpiculture in this extended sense was not un- 
known to the ancients, both in theory and in prac- 
tice. As to the former, the most noted example is 
that of Plato, who, in his "Republic," proposed 
certain arrangements as t<> marriage and the bring- 
ing up of children which he though 1 would improve 
the race, and hence he beneficial to the State. The 
State was to I 'Into nil in all. and lie considered that 
it should form one greal family. This idea could 
not be Carried into effect, however, so Ion-- as inde- 
pendent families existed, and therefore those ar- 
rangements had for one of their chief aims the 
abolition of what we regard ;i> family life. This 

Plato thought was the best lor the State, and the 

advantage which was supposed to accrue to it by 



11 



the absence of separate families is expressed in a 
marginal note, which says : " There will be no pri- 
vate interests among them, and therefore no law- 
suits or trials for assault or violence to elders." 

Plato's Restrictions on Parentage.— The end 
would hadly seem to justify the means, in these 
days, at least, when violence to elders is an un- 
common incident ; but how was the community oi 
wives and children by which it was sought to be 
attained to be brought about? It is said, " The best 
of either sex should be united with the best as 
often, and the inferior with the inferior as seldom, 
as possible." Thus the people were to be classified 
into "besf and -inferior/* and while the former 
were to be brought together as often as .possible, 
the latter were not to be united at all if it could be 
avoided. There was no question of marriage in 
either case. In the one, the union was for the pur- 
pose of obtaining children, and in the other for the 
simple gratification of the passions ; for only the 
offspring of the union between the sexes in the 
-best" class were to be reared. The children of the 
inferior class were not to be reared, " if the flock is 
to be maintained in first-class condition." This in- 
fanticide would matter little to the parents, as they 
had no control over their coming together, nor con- 
cern with the rearing of their offspring. Lots were 
to be drawn by the " less worthy " on each occasion 



i a 



of their being brought together. This was thai 
they might accuse their ill-luck and not the rulers, 
id case their partners were Dot to then- liking. The 

Slate was to provide not only what men and women 

were to be sexually united, but the ages within 
which this was to be permitted for the purpose of 
obtaining offspring. For a woman, the beginning 
of childbearing for the state was fixed at twenty 

years of age, and it was to continue until forty. \^>v 
men. the period of procreation is said to be between 

twenty-live and fifty-five years of age. Alter the 
specified ages men and women were to be allowed to 
•■ range at will," except within certain prescribed 
degrees, but on the understanding that no children 
born to such unions were to be reared. It is evi- 
dent that under such a system the actual relation- 
ship betweeo the members of the state family could 
he known only to its riders ; hut to provide againsl 
the union of persons too nearly related by hlo.nl. 
all those who were " begotteD at the time their 

fathers and mothers came together ** were regarded 
as brothers and sisters. Bui even brothers and Bis- 
ters might be united "if the Lot favors them, and 

they receive the sanction of the Pythian oracle.*' 
Thus Ear for the breeding of children laid down in 
Plato's "Republic." A.s to the rearing of them, we 
need only say that the children allowed to live were 
t<» he placed in the custody of guardians, t<» he ap- 
pointed by the siate from among the most worthy 



13 



of either sex, who were to bring them up in accord- 
ance with the principles of virtue. 

The idea which formed the basis of the regula- 
tions as to marriage in the " Republic " was carried 
into practice by Lycurgus in his government of 
Sparta. We are told by Plutarch in his "Lives," 
that Lycurgus considered children not so much the 
property of their parents as of the State, '"'and 
therefore he could not have them begotten by ordi- 
nary persons, but by the best men in it. " But he 
did not attempt to break up the private family, as 
was proposed by Plato. He sought rather to en- 
large its boundaries by allowing the introduction of 
a fresh paternal element when this could be done 
with advantage to the State. Thus, he approved of 
a man in years introducing to his young wife a 
"handsome and honest" young man, that she 
might bear a child by him. Moreover, if a man of 
character became impassioned of a married woman 
on account of her honesty and beautiful children, 
he might treat with her husband for the loan of 
her, '"that so planting in a beauty-bearing soil, he 
might produce excellent children, the congenial off- 
spring of excellent parents. " The principles which 
influenced Lycurgus were the same as those sought 
to be applied by Plato, although in a different way. 
Plutarch says, k 'He observed the vanity and ab- 
surdity of other nations, where people study to have 
their horses and dogs of the finest breed they can 



14 

procure, either by interest or money, and yel keep 

their wives .shut up, that the} may have children 
by none but themselves, though they may happen 
to be doting, decrepid or infirm. " Hence Lycurgus 
soughl to drive away the passion of jealousy "by 
making it quite as reputable to have children in 
common with persons of merit, as to avoid all 
offensive freedom in their own behaviour to their 



Lycurqan Laws.— According to Plutarch, the 
regulations enforced by Lycurgus, so far from en- 
couraging licentiousness of the women, such as 
afterwards prevailed in Sparta, did just the re- 
verse, as adultery was not known among them. 
That the system was beneficial to the state by tend- 
ing to secure healthy offspring is probable ; but Ly- 
curgus took ether means of bringing about this re- 
sult. His requiring girls to dance naked in public 
was intended to teach them modesty. But weare 
told further : " He ordered the virgins to exercise 
themselves in running, wrestling and throwing 
quoits and darts, that their bodies hem- strong and 
vigorous, thechildren produced by them might be 
the same : and that, thus fortified by exercise, they 
might the better support the pun-- of childbirth, 
<\^\ be delivered with safety." Moreover, he pro- 
vided against the propagation of disease and d- 
formation by directing that only such childrei 



15 



should be reared as passed examination by the most 
anoient men of the tribe. If a child were strong 
and well-proportioned, they gave orders for its edu- 
cation and assigned it one of the nine thousand 
shares of land. Thus infanticide was a recognized 
part of the Spartan system, as it was in that of 
Plato. The elders of the tribe were very careful 
about the nurses to whom the children were as- 
signed. When seven years old, the children were 
enrolled in companies, where they were all kept 
under the same order and discipline, and had their 
exercises and recreations in common. The boy of 
most conduct and courage was made captain, and 
their whole education was one of obedience. As 
for learning, Plutarch says they had just what was 
absolutely necessary ; and certainly it was not such 
as could be recommended for imitation in these 
days. 

Xenophon, in his essay on ' ' The Lacedemonian 
Republic," adds little to what Plutarch tells us with 
reference to the marriage regulations of Lycurgus. 
He remarks, however, that marriage was not al- 
lowed until the body was in full strength, as this 
was conducive "to the procreation of a robust and 
manly offspring. " He affirms, also, that those who 
were allowed by arrangement to associate with 
other men's wives were men who had an aversion 
to living with a wife of their own ! 



16 



Plutarch oh Tint Training of Ohiu>rbn. -In 
his "Morals," Plutarch gives a dissertation on the 

training of children, the firsl porti t which deals 

with stirpiculture in the limited sense of the term, 
bu1 is very inadequate, [ndeed, the only advice he 
gives is that a man should no1 keep company with 
harlots or concubines, because children by them are 
"blemished in their birth" by their base extrac- 
tion; and that no man should "keep company with 
his wife for issue's sake but when he is sober," lest 
,„. ,„..„., a drunkard. The main portion of Plu- 
tarch's treatise is concerned with the education oi 
children, which is the second partof stirpiculture 
asa B y 8 tem of complete cultivation. Introductory 
to the subject of education he speaks of nursing, to 
whirl, he attaches much importance. Plutarch in- 
sists on the necessity of mothers nursing their own 
children; nature, by providing them with two 
breasts, showing them thai they ran nurse even 
twins Bui if they cannot, they are to choose the 
best nurses they can get, and such as are bred after 

the Greek fashion. For, " as it is needful that the 

members of children should be Bhaped anghl as 

on as they are born, that they may not afterwards 

prove crooked and distorted, so it is no less expedi- 
ent thai their manners be well fashioned from the 
v beeinning; for childhood is a tender thing, 



\ er 



;m ,l easily wroughl into any shape. " 

Aiter referring to the importance of the chota 



17 



good companions for a child, Plutarch proceeds to 
consider the question of education, which he speaks 
of as the matter of most concern. As to education 
in general, he points out that a concurrence of three 
things is necessary to the " completing of virtue in 
practice," which is the aim of that process, that is: 
Nature, reason or learning, and use or exercise ; 
For, "if nature be not improved by instruction, it 
is blind ; if instruction be not assisted by nature, 
it is maimed ; and if exercise fail of the assistance 
of both, it is imperfect as to the attainment of its 
end." There cannot be "instruction" — a term which 
is here used as equivalent to "education," although 
the latter has a wider signification than the former, 
and being equivalent to mental cultivation, — with- 
out a teacher, and Plutarch says well, " we are to 
look after such masters for our children as are 
blameless in their lives, not justly reprovable for 
their manners, and of the best experience in teach- 
ing. For the very spring and root of honesty and 
virtue lies in the felicity of lighting on good educa- 
tion." He is, indeed, so much impressed with its 
value that he affirms : " The one chief thing in this 
matter — which compriseth the beginning, middle 
and end of all — is good education and regular in- 
struction." These two "afford great help and as- 
sistance towards the attainment of virtue and felici- 
ty. " He adds : ' ; Learning alone, of all things in 
our possession, is immortal and divine." 



18 

Plutarch dwells on various other matters con- 
nected with education better fitted i'<>v bis times 
than ours, bul he refers to the importance of exam- 
ple in words thai arc deserving of careful consider- 
ation, Be says: " The chiefesl thing thai fathers 
are to look to is. thai they themselves become i t 
fectual examples to their children, by doing aU 
those things which belong to them, and avoiding 
all vicious practices, thai in their lives, as in a 
-lass, their children may sec enough to give them 
an aversion to all ill words and adieus. For th 
thai chide children for such faults as they them- 
selves fall into unconsciously accuse themselves, 
under their children's names. And if they are alto- 
gether vicious in their own lives, they Lose the righl 
of reprehending their very servants, and much 

more do they forfeit it to their sons 

Wherefore we are to apply our minds to all such 
practices as may conduce to the good breeding of 
our children." 

It is not improbable that the marriage regula- 
tions ascribed to Lycurgus were based on institu- 
tions already in existence anion-' the Spartan-. 
From the statement of Polybius, that the brothers 
of a house often bad one wife between them, it has 
been inferred that in Sparta the Tibetan form of 

polyandry was practiced. According to Plutarch. 

another curious marriage custom prevailed, show- 
ing thai the Spartans, who differed in various re- 



19 



spects from other Greeks, had retained primitive 
habits. Thus, the bridegroom carried off the bride 
by violence, and for some time after this "mar- 
riage by capture " he visited her " with great cau- 
tion and apprehension of being discovered by the 
rest of the family ; the bride at the same time ex- 
erted all her art to contrive convenient opportuni- 
ties for their private meetings. And this they did, 
not for a short time only, but some of them even 
had children before they had an interview with 
their wives in the daytime ! This custom had much 
in common with the sodica marriages of the early 
Arabs, who. as we are told by Professor Robertson 
Smith, allowed a woman, while she remained with 
her own tribe, to receive the clandestine visits of a 
lover. Her offspring were recognized as legitimate 
and became members of the tribe. The incident of 
"capture"' could not occur, as it was a general 
custom in ancient Arabia for a husband to live 
among his wife's kinsfolk. 

Infanticide Among the Greeks. — The practice 
.of infanticide, which was the only mode by which 
Lycurgus, or even Plato in his imaginary republic, 
could really insure the existence of a healthy and 
vigorous population, was undoubtedly a survival 
from primitive times. The sacredness of infant 
life is the result of the high moral tone which has 
accompanied the spread of Christianity ; and it may 



20 

be said to be almosl unknown outside of the Christ- 
ian area< Various reasons are assigned by differ- 
ed peoples for the practice of infanticide; but one 
cause universally operative is the objection to rear- 
ing malformed or unhealthy offspring. Bavaj 
adopl various modes of improving, according to 
fch eir ideas, the physical appearance of their chil- 
dren. Giving the proper form to the nose is con- 
sidered a very importanl matter by the native 
Australian mother and by the Polynesian [sland- 
ers; as, indeed, it was by the ancient Persians, 
among whom the molding of the nose to the proper 
curve was essential, especially in the royal family. 
The flat bead of the American Indian of the north- 
west coast was at one time considered a beauty, 
and was restricted to the members of the tribe, 

slaves not being allowed to undergo the o ary 

head compression. The small artificial foot of the 
Chinese Lady is another case in point. But how- 
ever much the physical appearance might be al- 
tered, do effect could thus be made in the general 
physique of the race. The most easy way of keep- 
ing this up to a proper standard is to destroy all the 
infants that possess physical defects; and such a 
course is adopted bymanj savages, although il is by 
Q0 m eans the most influential cause of infanticide. 

Group Marriage, a remarkable system of re- 
lationships, with which iscombineda seriesoi i 



21 



illations framed with the object of pointing out 
what persons are entitled to enter into the marital 
relation, is found to be prevalent in nearly all un- 
civilized peoples. The members of a tribe are 
divided into two or more groups, each of which con- 
sists of persons who are nearly related by blood, 
and who are forbidden, therefore, to intermarry. 
One of the tribes of Central Australia, the Dieyerie, 
has a legend which explains the marriage system 
common to them and to all the other tribes, as 
being intended to prevent the evil effects of inter- 
marriage between persons very near of kin. The 
story is valuable as showing the opinion enter- 
tained by savages as to the effect on the race of 
breeding in and in — a subject to which we may 
have occasion to make further reference. Dr. J. F. 
McLennan and other writers on primitive marriage 
refer to the practice among certain virilized peo- 
ples of antiquity of what we regard as incestuous 
marriage, in support of the view that in the earl}; 
history of mankind intercourse between the sexes 
was promiscuous. * Such an explanation is entirely 
uncalled for, however, as the custom was intended 
to secure purity of blood, that is, blood of a par- 



* Mr. Darwin accepted this view at first; but in a note to the sec- 
ond edition of his "Descent of Man" he says: " C. Staniland 
Wake argues strongly against the views held by these three writers 
on the former prevalence of almost promiscuous intercourse." See 
"Origin of Kinship and Marriage." Kedwaj T , London. 1888. 



22 



ticular Man of ancestors. Buch marriages were 
known only i«> a few peoples, and they were evi- 
dently of comparatively late origin. Whether the 
purity of blood was attended with improvement of 
the stock may be doubted ; as, whatever may have 
been the actual origin of the marriage regulations 
of the numerous peoples among whom the classifi- 
catory system of relationship is established, thej 
arc intended, without question, to prevenl the in- 
termarriage of persons who arc regarded as uear 
blood relations, the general disapproval of which 
must have had some sufficient reason, or, at all 
ents, must have originated in ideas supposed to 
furnish good grounds for it. 

Making Children the Property of the State. 
The principles which were embodied in the scheme 
proposed by Plato, in his "Republic," to bring about 
an improvement in the race are mainlj two: First, 
restrictioD on the formation of procreative unions ; 
'iid. infanticide. The breaking up of private or 
separate families necessarily resulted from the oper- 
ation of his "marriage " regulations, and was in- 
tended t<> emphasize the idea which Plato, like Ly- 
curgus, insisted on, that the children belonged to 
the State. Lycurgus sought to enforce the same 
idea by allowing wives t<> have intercourse with 
other men than their husbands, thus making chil- 
dren "common" in some sense, while retaining 



23 



the separate family intact. Thus he introduced, or 
rather it should be said, established a modified form 
of polyandrous marriage ; Plato's system, on the 
other hand, being one of mere pairing, as in the 
breeding of animals. In either case the union of 
very near relations was not permitted, that is, be- 
tween brother and sister, or parent and child. Yet 
Lycurgus allowed marriage between a half-brother 
and sister by the same mother. Curiously enough, 
this was forbidden by the Athenian law. which 
permitted a brother and sister by the same father 
only to intermarry. The Greek rule, as laid down 
in Smith's ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman An- 
tiquities," was that "proximity of blood or con- 
sanguinity was not, with sonic few exceptions, a bar 
to marriage," although direct lineal descent was 
so. Moreover, there was no attempt to enforce 
consanguineous marriages, so as to ensure purity 
of blood, such as was customary among the Incas of 
Peru, the laws of which required that the oldest 
son and daughter of the sovereign should inter- 
marry because the Incas were descended from the 
Sun, and the Sun had married his sister the Moon, 
and had united in marriage his two first children ! 
A more practical reason was found in the rule that 
the kingdom should be inherited through both 
parents. Hence it was not permitted to mix the 
blood of the Sun, or rather of those who claimed 
solar descent, with that of men. 






( ii:i.. i\.\ .Ml-: i HODS Nbl Si [TABLE TO OUB TlMK.— 

It ig evident that the principles which governed the 
ancients in their endeavors to improve the race are 
cot capable of application at the present day, und 
the conditions of modern civilization. Instead of 
placing further restrictions on marriage, the ten- 
dency dow is to loosen those which have hitherto 
existed, although certain regulations, such as re- 
late to i _ . Qsent, etc., are n cognized as nec< a- 
sarj for the into t the State. M on over, 

,i. ]• faciliti given than were formerly al- 

lowed for dissolving ill-assorted unions, thus get- 
ting rid of the excuse for the formation of irregular 
connections. NT< v< rth< '• bs, the interests of n< ither 
society at large aor of individuals will permit of 
the introduction of the temporary or occasional 
pairing a, which is a return to an animal 

state, and, therefore, uot worthy of the dignity un- 
ci in the term, marriage, and which is incon- 
sistent with true family lit'.-, h would be Liable to 
all kinds of abuse, and would become, in most 
; legalized S3 stem of prostitution, thus dr g 
ging society down to a lower level instead of rais- 
ing it. and tending to the deterioration, instead of 
the improvement, of the race, if not to its extinc- 
tion. A- to infanticide, this certainly would not 
be tolerated by public opinion, although it is now 
) ;lI ._ sorted to under the guise of abortion, 

To L< galize child-killing under any cireum 



25 



would be to offer a premium for murder, even if 
it were permitted only with the express sanction 
in every case of the officials of the State. There 
is now no justification for such a course, as the 
education of those who appear to he on a mental 
level with the animals has been carried so far that 
the term '* idiot" may soon have to be dropped 
from our vocabulary. 

It must be affirmed, however, that the whole sub- 
ject of the improvement of the race was dealt with 
by Plato, and, indeed, by the ancients generally, 
in a very crude and superficial manner. This lias 
been well pointed out by Professor B. Jowett in 
the Introduction to his translation of Plato's '•Re- 
public/' Professor Jowett objects generally that 
the great error in the speculations of Plato and 
others on the improvement of the race is. "thai 
the difference between men and the animals is for- 
gotten in them. The human being is regarded 
with the eye of a dog or bird fancier, or at best 
of a slave owner; the higher or human qualities 
are left out. The breeder of animals aims chiefly 
at size or speed or strength ; in a few cases, at 
courage and temper; most often the fitness of the 
animal for food is the greatest desideratum. But 
mankind are not bred to be eaten, nor yet for their 
superiority in fighting or in running or in drawing 
carts. Nor does the improvement of the human 
race consist merely in the increase of the bones and 



26 



flesh, bul in the growth and enlightenment of the 
mind. Eence there must be a marriage of true 
minds as well as of bodies ; of imagination and 

reason as well as of lusts and instincts. .Men and 

women without feeling or imagination are justly 
called brutes; ye1 Plato takes away these qualities 
and puts nothing in their place, not even the desire 
of a noble offspring, since parents are not to know 
their own children. The most important trans- 
action of social life lie who is the idealist philoso- 
pher converts into the most brutal. K<»r the pair 
are to have no relation t<> each other hut at the 
hymeneal festival; their children are not theirs, 
hut the State's ; nor is any tie of affectiOD to unite 
them. Yei theanalogyof the animals might have 
saved Plato from a gigantic error if he hail not Lost 
sighl of his own illustration ! For the " nobler Borl 
<»f birds and beasts" nourish and protect their off- 
spring and are faithful t<> one another ! It i- c< r 
tainly surprising, asJowett says, that the greatest 
of ancient philosophers should, in his marriage 
regulations, have fallen into the error of m parating 
hody and mind. He did so probably through a 
fals< nation of the antagonism between the family 

and the State, and hence, as LycUTgUS did not aim 

at destroying family life he escaped that error. 

And yet there is nothing t<> show that the mar- 
riage regulations of Lycurgus had any real effect 
on the children of the State. Thai the early Spar- 



27 



tans were a hardy and courageous people is un- 
doubtedly true ; but apart from the practice of in- 
fanticide, which would necessarily get rid of the 
weak, their character and conduct can be explained 
by reference merely to the system of training, both 
of youth and maidens, which Lycurgus rigidly en- 
forced. Lacedemon was essentially a military re- 
public, and its rulers aimed to breed soldiers, rather 
than men in the noble sense in which the term 
"man" is now used. Indeed, there is nothing to 
show that any compulsory attempt to improve the 
race has ever been successful, apart from the effect 
which the destruction of feeble and deformed off- 
spring may have, and the influence of the severe 
training of those who are allowed to survive. 

Nevertheless, the human race has vastly im- 
proved since its first appearance on the earth, if 
the teachings of the doctrine of evolution are true 
and applicable to man as well as to the inferior 
animals. The passage from the native Australian 
to the European is a long one, and yet they are 
supposed to represent a common primitive stock. 
The steps by which the European has been gradu- 
ally developed, with his special characteristics, can- 
not now be traced ; but one of the chief agencies 
to which the result is due is that to which Darwin 
applied the term, "sexual selection." As natural 
selection has relation to adaptation, and its aim is 
"the survival of the fittest," so sexual selection 



has reference to beauty, and its object is the per- 
petuation of the most beautiful, according to the 
taste of the peoples practicing it. Darwin was the 
first to point out the importance of sexual selection 
for certain purposes which, as stated l>\ Profi — r 
(J. J. Romanes, in his "Darwin and after Dar- 
win,"* "have no reference to utility or the pre- 
servation of life." The latter writer in treating of 
the subject affirms it is universally admitted that 
the higher animals do uot pair indiscriminately, 
the members of either sex preferring "those in- 
dividuals of the opposite sex which are to them 
most attractive." Man} birds and certain mam- 
mals dearly display the esthetic sense, which is 
shown by the former particularly in the adorning 
Of their uests with colored objects; and it is re- 
flected in the personal appearance of the animals 
themselves. During the pairing season, birds take 
(.n their most brilliant plumage, and the males 
take great pains to exhibit their charms before the 
females, actively competing with one another m so 
doing. There is similar rivalry among song birds, 
who strive to Bee which can best please the fe- 
males by their singing. 

Sexual Selection. -Professor Romanes, after 
referring to those fact-. \\ hich are considered in de- 



• The Open Cowl Publishing Company, Chica 1892. 



29 



tail by his great predecessor, states the theory of 
sexual selection as follows: "There can be no 
question that the courtship of birds is a highly 
elaborate business, in which the males do their best 
to surpass one another in charming the females. 
Obviously the inference is that the males do not 
take all this trouble for nothing ; but that the fe- 
males give their consent to pair with the males 
whose personal appearance, or whose voice, proves 
to be the most attractive. But, if so, the young of 
the male bird who is thus selected will inherit his 
superior beauty ; and thus, in successive genera- 
tions, a continuous advance will be made in the 
beauty of plumage or of song, as the case may 
be,— both the origin and development of beauty in 
the animal world being thus supposed due to the 
esthetic taste of the animals themselves." 

It is not necessary to refer particularly to the 
evidence in support of the theory of sexual selec- 
tion. There can be no doubt that it is a most im- 
portant factor in the perpetuation and increase of 
certain characters, those which come within the 
category of "beautiful," the very existence of 
which proves them to be beneficial to the stock to 
which the animals exhibiting them belong. The 
fundamental fact is that they have " : the effect of 
charming the females into a performance of the 
sexual act ; " an opinion which is supported by the 
more general fact that "both among quadrupeds 



30 



and birds, individuals of the one ses are capable 
of feeling a strong antipathy against, or a strong 
preference for, certain Individuals of the opposite 



Bex." 



These statements arc applicable also to man, 
wiih whom the principle of sexual selection must 
have been influential to at Least the same degree 
as among the lower animals. [1 may be expected, 
indeed, to be more influential, as the esthetic taste 
witli which it i- associated becomes more highly 
developed with man than with any member of the 
animal kingdom. Even here it is uot a question of 
mere coloration. The theory of sexual selection as 
framed bj Darwin is concerned, as Romanes points 

out, QOt so much with color itself as with the par- 
ticular disposition of color in the form of orna- 
mental patterns. These have a kind of structural 

value, and certain birds, moreover, possess actual 
structural peculiarities, such as ornamental append- 
3 i,, the beak, the only use of which would ap- 
p ( ar to be to charm the female during courtship. 
We may suppose, therefore, that sexual selection 
has affected uot merely what may he termed the 
superficial characters of mam hut to some extent. 
a j least, those which have a structural value. 

The principle of sexual selection is applicable 
primarily to the characteristics of the male ; hut 
Darwin supposes them to have been transferred to 
the ether sex. and through them transmitted to the 



31 



race generally. In his "Descent of Man," lie re- 
marks of the actual influence over the race of that 
principle : " The nervous system not only regulates 
most of the existing functions of the body, but has 
indirectly influenced the progressive development 
of various bodily structures and of certain mental 
qualities. Courage, pugnacity, perseverance, size 
and strength of body, weapons of all kinds, musical 
organs, both vocal and instrumental, bright colours 
and ornamental appendages have all been indi- 
rectly gained by the one sex or the other, through 
the exertion of choice, the influence of love and 
jealousy, and the appropriation of the beautiful in 
sound, colour or form ; and these powers of the 
mind manifestly depend on the development of the 
brain." 

That sexual selection has actually resulted in 
modification of human physical structure, Darwin 
thinks can be shown by reference to the ancient 
Persians, whose type was greatly improved by in- 
termarriage with the beautiful Georgian and Cir- 
cassian women. He refers to several similar cases, 
and particularly to the Jollofs of West Africa, 
whose handsome appearance is said to be due to 
their retaining for wives only their most beautiful 
slaves, the others being sold. 

Sexual selection may be operative for the im- 
provement of the race through the action of either 
man or woman, and the conditions of its activity 



are < 



different in either case. A,fl to the action of 
man, Darwin says in relation to primitive peopl< 
• The strongest and most vigorous men- -those who 
could best defend and hunt for their families, who 
were provided with the best weapons and possessed 
the most property, such as a large number of d 
or other animals— would succeed in rearing a great- 
er average number of offspring than the weaker 
and p 00r er members of the same tribe. Therecan, 
also, be no doubt that such men would generally be 
aD le to Beled the more attractive women. At pre- 
sent, the chiefs of nearly every tribe throughoul 
the world succeed in obtaining more than one wife." 
With reference to selection by the women, Dar- 
win sh.»w. that among savages they have much 
m0 re to Bay in their marriages than is usually sup- 
posed. He remarks: "They can tempt the men 
they prefer, and can sometimes reject those whom 
they dislike, either before or after their marri 
Preference on the part of the women, steadily act- 
ing i n nn\ one direction, would ultimately aff< cl 
the character of the tribe, for the women would 
generally choose, nol merely the handsomest men, 
according to their standard of taste, but tlu.se who 
were at the same time best able to defend and sup- 
port them. Such well endowed pairs would com- 
monly rear a Larger number of offspring than the 
Less favored." Darwin adds: "The same result 
would obvioush follow in a still more marked man- 



33 



ner if there were selection on both sides, that is, 
if the more attractive, and at the same time more 
powerful men were to prefer, and were preferred 
by, the more attractive women. And this double 
form of selection seems actually to have occurred, 
especially during the earlier periods of our long his- 
tory." 

The investigations of Darwin as to the operation 
of sexual selection had reference chiefly to the 
modification of physical characters. He did not 
altogether lose sight, however, of its possible influ- 
ence in affecting for the better the mental charac- 
teristics of the race. He concludes bis enquiry by 
the remark that "Man might by selection do some- 
thing, not only for the bodily constitution and 
frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and 
moral qualities. Both sexes ought to refrain from 
marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior 
in body or mind ; but such hopes are Utopian, and 
will never be even partially realized until the laws 
of inheritance are thoroughly known. Every one 
does good service who aids towards this end." 

It is in the application of the principle of sexual 
selection to the mental characteristics of man. that 
any real improvement of the race, viewed as con- 
sisting of human beings and not of mere animals, 
must be brought about. Beauty of physical form 
and feature is of importance in human relations 
only so far as it is associated with beauty of mind 



I 



and character, thai is, with high intellectual and 
moral attainments. Thai th< se often go together 
is true, but it is not always the case. Grant Allen 
says: "To be sound in wind and limb; to be 
healthy of body and mind ; to be educated ; to be 
emancipated ; to be free, to be beautiful — these 

things arc ends towards which all should strive, 

and by attaining which all are happier in them- 
selves, and more useful to others." But physical 
and intellectual perfeel ion are not always found 
together, as was observed by Darwin, when he 
mentioned among the causes which interfere with 
the physical action of sexual selection the fact that 

men are largely attracted by the mental charms 

of women. Professor Jowett affirms truly that 
•■ .Man\ of the noblest specimens of the human race 
have been among the weakest physically. Tyr- 
taens or JEsop, or our own Newton, would have 
been destroyed at Sparta, and some of the fairest 
and strongest men and women have been among 
the wickedest and worst." Hence, lie properly in- 
fers that ■' Xot by the Platonic device (A' uniting 
the strong and the fair with the strong and the 
fair, regardless of sentiment and morality, noryel 
l>\ his other device of combining dissimilar natures, 
have mankind gradually passed from the brutality 
and licentiousness of primitive marriage t«> mar- 
riage ( Ihrist ian and civilized." 
The truth of this inference cannot be denied, he- 



35 



cause to leave out of view considerations of senti- 
ment and morality would fatally vitiate any scheme 
for the improvement of the human race. But Pro- 
fessor Jowett affirms that, w ' We do not know how 
by artificial means any improvement in the breed 
can be effected." The problem is no doubt a com- 
plex one. As he points out, a child has usually 
thirty progenitors only four steps back, and what- 
ever truth there may be in the inheritance of 
special physical characters, "We have a difficulty 
in distinguishing what is a true inheritance of 
genius or other qualities, and what is mere imita- 
tion or the result of similar circumstances. Great 
men and great women have rarely Ik at great fathers 
and mothers." Professor Jowett thinks, indeed, 
that too much importance may be ascribed to hered- 
ity. He says : ' ' The doctrine of heredity may seem 
to take out of our hands the conduct of our lives, 
but it is the idea, not the fact, which is really terri- 
ble to us. For what we have received from our 
ancestors is only a fraction of what we are or may 
become. The knowledge that drunkenness or in- 
sanity has been prevalent in a family may be the 
best safeguard against their recurrence in a future 
generation. The parent will be most awake to the 
vices or diseases in his child of which he is most 
sensible within himself. The whole of life may be 
directed to their prevention or cure. The traces of 
corruption may become fainter, or be wholly ef- 



36 



fact (1 ; bhe Inherited tendency to vie- and crime 
may l><* eradicated. And so heredity, from being a 
curse, may become a blessing. We acknowledge 
that in the matter of our birth, as in our nature 
generally, there are previous circumstances which 
affect us. Bui on this platform of circumstances, 
or within this wall of necessity, we have still the 
power of creating a, life for availmenl by the re- 
forming energy of the human will." 

There is much truth in these remarks of Pro- 
jor Jowett, hut they do not affect the argument 
in favor <>f the possibility of bringing about an im- 
provement in the race if the proper means are 
adopted. It would not ho any wiser for the strong 
and healthy t<> marry with the sick and weak, be- 
cause the Latter happen to be highly intellectual or 
moral, than to marry with the strong and healthy 
if those physical characters are united with mental 
weakness or immorality. There is a consensus of 

opinion at the pr< senl day. that what should ho 

aimed ,it is the union <>f physical perfection with 

that of intellect and character, in the persuasion 
that steps towards this end will ultimately lead to 
the genera] improvement of the human race. 

Difficulties in the Way. -The difficulty i> to 
devise and carry out some scheme for the purp 
which shall he both feasible and agreeable to pub- 
lic sentiment. The latter consideration would pre- 



37 



vent any attempt at active stirpiculture under 
State direction, although the State might indirectly 
affect the result by subsidiary regulations as to 
marriage and training of children. There is noth- 
ing, however, to prevent the systematic efforts of 
private individuals, and in such cases the causes 
which Darwin cites as interfering with the physical 
action of sexual selection would not operate. The 
most systematic experiment in stirpiculture of mod- 
ern times was that originated by John Humphrey 
Noyes at the Oneida Community, in central New 
York, from 18G8 to 1879. A paper on this experi- 
ment was read by Anita Newcomb McGee before 
the American Science Association in August, 1891, 
which was published in "The Herald of Health," 
for January, 1892, and the following facts are taken 
from that paper. 

An Experiment in Stirpiculture.— Noyes was 
the founder of a religious sect, the members of 
which, owing to their desire for freedom from sin. 
were called Perfectionists. Holiness was the first 
principle of their creed, and Noyes thought to 
transmit that condition from one generation to 
another by a process of stirpiculture. To overcome 
the "selfishness" of monogamic marriage he de- 
vised a "system of regulated promiscuity, begin- 
ning at earliest puberty, and by a method of his 
own invention he separated the amative from the 



38 



propagative functions." Jt^ firsl principle was thai 
of a judicious in and in breeding, with occasional 
mingling of foreign blood, as in stock-raising. The 
second principle adopted was thai of tc careful 
Lection of individuals for breeding purposes. Gene- 
alogies were studied and medical histories com- 
piled." A committee, headed by Noyes, selected 
the holiest members who were free from physical 
defects, intellectual and other considerations being 
given less weight at first, although in later years 
they received more consideration. The parents 
were of all ages, but the father was always older 
than the mother. Some sympathy between the 
persons mated was always required; and if a pro- 
position for union came from two individuals it was 
allowed if no objections were found. Xoyes held 
that uncle and niece are as much related as father 
and daughter, because brothers have identical 
blood, and thai cousins are in the same relation t<> 
each other as half brothers. In the Oneida Com- 
munity uncles and nieces twice paired, and it is 
noticeable that a considerable proportion of the 
children had Xoyes' blood on one <>r both side-. 
The founder himself had nine children in the Com- 
munity. t<» winch belonged also his brother, his 
two sisters and their children. A.s t<» the care of 
the children, this belonged exclusively to the moth- 
ers for the first nine month-, after which for a 
further nine months the} took charge of their off- 



39 



spring at night only. When eighteen months old, 
the children were transferred to a separate depart- 
ment which was managed by those who had shown 
themselves specially fitted for the work. 

Let us see what was the result of Xoyes' experi- 
ment. Of the sixty * children born, five died at or 
near childbirth from unforeseen causes depending 
upon the mother. All the others were alive at the 
date of Miss McGee's communication, except a boy 
who was reared in spite of weakness, and died 
from a trifling malady when about sixteen years 
of age. All the children were strong and healthy, 
the boys being tall — several over six feet — broad- 
shouldered and finely proportioned ; the girls robust 
and well-built. It is remarkable, that among the 
children between five and nine years of age. thir- 
teen w^ere boys and six only were girls. With 
reference to their intellectual ability, it is stated by 
Miss McGee that, of the oldest sixteen boys, ten 
were in business, chiefly employed as clerks, fore- 
men, etc., in the manufactories of the joint stock 
company. The eleventh was a musician of repute ; 
another a medical student ; one passed through col- 
lege and studied law ; one was a college senior, and 
one entered college after winning State and local 
scholarships, and gave great mathematical prom- 
ise. The sixteenth boy was a mechanic, and the 



* It should be sixty-one. 



40 



only one employed in manual Labor. Of the sis 
girls between eighteen and twenty-two years, three 
are said by Miss McGee fco be especially intellect- 
ual. The mothers of these children usually be- 
longed to the classes employed in manual Labor, 
while the fathers, with the exception of the Noyes 
family and half a dozen Lawyers, doctors and 
clergymen, were all farmers and mechanics. Ii Is 
noteworthy that, as a rule, the fathers were the 
intellectual superiors of their mates. " and enquiry 
develops the fact, known in the Community, thai 
in these cases the children are markedly superior 
to the maternal stock."' 

When this system of complex marriage had been 
in operation twenty year-, the desire to return to 
the old system o\' monogamy arose, and it became 
so strong in the Community that its founder re- 
tired from it. and on A.UgUSl 26, I s *'.'. complex 
marriage was renounced, although nominally "in 
deference to public sentiment.*' Twenty-five couples 
who had been married before entering the Com- 
munity again became husband and wife, and twen- 
ty marriages between other individuals took place 
within four months after the abandonment of the 
stirpicultural experiment. There were then in the 
Community two hundred and sixteen adults and 
eighty-three children under twenty years of aj 

So far as the real object which the founder of the 
Oneida Community had in view in bis marriage 



41 



system, it was undoubtedly a failure, as of the off- 
spring, in spite of their early doctrinal training, 
only a very few are church members, and but one 
is a Perfectionist. This is the son of an uncle 
and a niece, both of Noyes' blood. From a physical 
and intellectual standpoint the experiment would 
seem to have given promise of success, but it con- 
tinued too short a time to be of much scientific 
value. The result may be stated in the words of 
Miss McGee, who says that the complete failure to 
perpetuate the church through stirpiculture "would 
seem to indicate that, while our race would doubt- 
less be greatly benefited by more attention to laws 
of breeding, yet to attempt promulgation of a be- 
lief by this means alone is only to court defeat. In 
spite of the energy and magnetism of so remark- 
able a man as Noyes, in spite of his long-continued 
efforts, and just when success seemed within his 
grasp, his one misjudgment of human nature bore 
fruit, the neglected instinct of monogamy arose in 
its might and crushed to nothing the whole struc- 
ture, and he. the builder, went last of all. With 
the close of his life, April 13, 1886, ended a unique 
and interesting history." 

Intermarriage. — We have seen that the founder 
of the Oneida Community permitted the intermar- 
riage of uncle and niece, although he considered 
them related as nearly as father and daughter. 



42 

This question of the intermarriage of near blood 
relations is an important one in its bearing on the 
question of stirpiculture, and as already mentioned, 
it has engaged the attention of nearly .-ill the lower 
races of mankind. It has, indeed, been provided 
againsl by the marriage restrictions of mosl uncul- 
tured peoples, and their systems of relationship 
clearly point out what persons are within the per- 
mitted limits of marriage. It appears to be the 
genera] rule that the children of two brothers or of 
two sisters, whether own or tribal, cannot inter- 
marry, but that the children of a brother and those 
of a sister may be thus united, although sometimes 
this is not allowed where own brother and sister 
are concerned.* 

The question of the effect on offspring of con- 
sanguineous marriages was some time ago particu- 
larly enquired into by Mr. A. 11. Euth, who. after 
a consideration of all the information available, 
came, in his work, " The Marriage of Near Kin." to 
the following conclusions : 

" l — That any deterioration through the marriage 

of near kin. per se, even if there he such a thing in 
the lower animals, is impossible in man. owing to 
the slow propagation of the specie-. 



Lorimi r Fison, in "The Journal <>f the Anthropological In- 
stitute," May, 1895, pag< 361. The whole sul .j.-.t is exhaustively 
treated by C. St aniland Wake, in hia "Origin "t" Kinship and Mar- 



43 



"2 — That any deterioration through the chance 
accumulation of an idiosyncrasy, though more like- 
ly to occur in families where the marriage of blood 
relations was habitual, practically does not occur 
oftener than in other marriages, or it would be 
more easily demonstrated. 

" 3 — That, seeing the doubt, to say the least of 
it, which exists concerning the effect for harm of 
marriages between near kin, and on the other hand 
the certainty that whenever and wherever marriage 
is impeded a direct and proportionate impulse is 
given to the practice of immorality, it is advisable 
not to extend the prohibition against marriage be- 
yond the third collateral degree, and to permit all 
marriages of affinity excepting those in the direct 
ascending or descending line." 

There appears to be no doubt that what are re- 
garded among Christian peoples as incestuous mar- 
riages are not desirable. How far marriage unions 
between first cousins are advisable depends, as ap- 
pears from Mr. Huth's remarks, on considerations 
which affect the question generally. If there are 
any serious physical, intellectual or moral defects 
on either side, no marriage should take place. 

Woman's Selective action. — Apart from the 
question of consanguinity, the principles which 
should govern all marriages is that of sexual selec- 
tion, which should have reference, however, not 



u 



merely fco physical characters, bu1 also to mental 
and moral characteristics, In applying this princi- 
ple, it musl be remembered that while man. like 
the male of all animals, does the courting, woman, 

like all females, makes the selection; at least tins 
is the general rule among tie- most cultured peo- 
ples. Tims it is evident that woman possesses the 
power of largely influencing the improvement of 

the human race, and in this fact we may see tie- 
possibility of this being effected by the operation of 

general social causes, without having recourse to 

individual experiments, such as that Undertaken by 

Noyes, which are necessarily limited in their action. 

and may, after all, have like practical result. If 
(ill women could be induced (<> combine for thai end 
they could probably bring about tlie desired im- 
provement by their own efforts. 

On this subject the well-known naturalist. Mr. 
A. R. Wallace, has some judicious remarks in an 
article on "Human Progress, Past and Future." in 
The Arena for January, L892. Mr. Wallace, who 
accepts the views of Weismann as to the non-in- 

heritance (A' acquired characters, think> thai the 
physical and moral evils and degradation attendant 
on the conditions of modern city life will have no 
permanent effects, when ;i more rational and ele- 
vating system of social organization is brought 
about. The most important agency in this social 
eneration will he the selective action of woman. 



45 



under the influence of her newly acquired freedom 
and higher education. Says Mr. Wallace : " When 
such social changes have been effected that no 
woman will be compelled, either by hunger, isola- 
tion or social compulsion, to sell herself, whether 
in or out of wedlock, and when all women alike 
shall feel the refining influence of a true harmoniz- 
ing education, of beautiful and elevating surround- 
ings, and of a public opinion which shall be found- 
ed on the highest aspirations of their age and coun- 
try, the result will be a form of human selection 
which will bring about a continuous advance in the 
average status of the race. Under such conditions. 
all who are deformed either in body or mind, though 
they may be able to lead happy and contented lives, 
will, as a rule, leave no children to inherit their 
deformity. Even now we find many women who 
do not marr}^ because they have never found the 
man of their ideal. When no woman will be com- 
pelled to marry for a bare living or for a comfort- 
able home, those who remain unmarried from their 
own free choice will certainly increase in number, 
while many others, having no inducement to an 
early marriage, will wait until they meet with a 
partner who is really congenial to them. In such 
a reformed society the vicious man, the man of de- 
graded taste or of feeble intellect, will have little 
chance of finding a wife, and his bad qualities will 
die out with himself. The most perfect and beau- 



tiful in body and mind will, on fche other hand, be 
most Bought and therefore be most likely to marry 
early, the less highly endowed Later, and the leasl 
gifted in any way the latesl of all ; and this will 
be the ease with both sexes. From tins varying 
age of marriage, as Mr. Galton lias shown, there 
will result a more rapid increase of tin- former than 
of the latter, and this cause continuing at work for 
successive generations will ;it length bring the 
average man to be the equal of those who arc now 
among the more advanced of the race."' 

We have here tin- application of the principle of 
sexual selection in its highest sense, although limit- 
ed in action to women, and it is undoubtedly the 
phase of stirpiculture which will become operative 
when the " emancipation of women " 1- completed. 
There is one feature of modern society which may 
retard its operation, and which was referred to by 
Darwin as interfering with the physical effect <>f 
sexual selection in the past. Wealth is now. more 
than ever before, an important factor in society, 
and not only man's hut woman's choice in matri- 
mony is often governed by money considerations. 
The possession of wealth may be evidence of men- 
tal astuteness, but not necessarily of high morality. 
and until it irasis to he sought aft'i- m marriage it 
will seriously interfere with the improvement of 
the race on its higher planes. 

The sexual selection which Mr. Wallace so ably 



47 



advocates is to be exercised by woman, and hence 
its efficiency will depend on the fitness of woman, 
not only to choose proper partners in marriage, but 
to communicate the highest physical and mental 
characters to her offspring. She can transmit only 
what she herself possesses, and she will choose 
that which is in sympathy with her own feelings and 
desires, so that if she is to affect the race bene- 
ficially, she must seek first her own perfection. 
Hence the great importance of the woman's move- 
ment of the present day, the basis of which is the 
better development of her physical, mental and 
moral faculties, without which she cannot expect 
to have the increased social privileges to which she 
may aspire. The greatest social privilege women 
can have is to be the chief agent in the improve- 
ment of the race, and through it the regeneration 
of society itself. Lady May Jeune. in reply to 
those who think that the present relations between 
mothers and daughters threaten family disruption, 
observes, ''That woman was created for the pur- 
pose of being the wife and mother of mankind no 
one can deny, and that none of the discoveries of 
science or any attempt to solve the mysteries of 
life have brought her one bit nearer the knowledge 
of how to unburden herself of these responsibilities, 
is also a fact." This must be true if the race is to 
be continued ; for without wives there can be no 
mothers. Being possible mothers, therefore, it is 



L8 

,,\. if fche race and society are to be mi- 
proved thai women shall acquire the highesl phy- 
sical, intellectual and moral educatiou they arc 
capable of, and if they require the same qualities 
in their husbands, the problem we are considering 

will he solved. 

Man's and Woman's Co-OPBBATION.— We have 
here the central idea of the New Bedonism advo- 
cated by Mr. Grant Mien, whose views necessitate 
the active agency of man as well as of woman. 
This is only reasonable, seeing thai offspring de- 
pend on the co-operation of two factors, and thai 
if either of them is defective the offspring musl 
share in the defect. " Self-development is an aim 
of all," says Mr. Granl Allen, "an aim which will 
make all stronger and braver, and wiser, and bet- 
ter. It will make each in the end more helpful to 
humanity. To be sound in wind and limb; to be 
healthy of body and mind ; to be educated, to be 
emancipated, to be free, to be beautiful tl 
things are ends towards which all should Btrive, 
and by attaining which all are happier in them- 
selves, and more useful to others." Bence the fctow 
Bedonism teaches thai "to prepare .an-selves for 
the duties of paternity and maternity, by making 
ourselves as vigorous and healthful as we can be 
[g a duty we owe to all our children unborn and 
to one another." This applas as well to " the body 



49 



spiritual, intellectual and esthetic " as to the phy- 
sical body. Mr. Grant Allen thinks the theory he 
advocates will introduce a new system, which "will 
not include the selling of self into loveless union 
for a night or for a lifetime ; the bearing of chil- 
dren by a mother to a man she despises or loathes 
or shrinks from ; the production by force, sancti- 
fied by law, of hereditary drunkards, hereditary 
epileptics, hereditary consumptives, hereditary crim- 
inals. We shall expect in the future a purer and 
truer relation between father and mother, parent 
and child. We shall expect some sanctity to at- 
tach to the idea, of paternity, some thought and 
care to be given beforehand to the duties of mother- 
hood. We will not admit that the chance union of 
two unfit persons, who ought never to have made 
themselves parents at all. or ought never to have 
made themselves parents with one another, can be 
rendered holy and harmless by the hands of a priest 
extended to bless a bought love, or a bargain of im- 
pure marriage. In one word, for the first time in 
the history of the race, we shall evolve the totally 
new idea of responsibility in parentage. And as 
part of this responsibility we shall include the tivo 
antithetical, but correlative, doctrines of a moral 
abstinence from fatherhood (aid motherhood on the 
part of the unfit, and a moral objection to father- 
hood and motherhood on the part of the noblest, 



50 

the purest, the sanest, the healthiest, the most able 
among us. We will not doom to forced celibacy 
half our finest mothers" 

The Individual's Rights. —From the racial stand- 
point these views are just and cannot be contro- 
verted, but something must be allowed to the indi- 
vidual The relative position and rights of the race 
and the individual are in a dispute, which lias be- 
come intensified since the development of the the- 
ory of evolution. But the individual is the begin- 
ning of the race and he should be its end- There- 
fore, in seeking to improve tie- race, violence must 
not be done to the highest sentiments of the indi- 
vidual. It is a fact that many highly cultured 
individuals have a repugnance to certain aspects of 
married life, and this repugnance appears t<> be 
justified by the further fact that a high state >f 
refinement is often attended with less of physical 
productiveness. One of the most curious result* 
Qalton's enquiries into heredity was that wealthy 
families have a tendency to die out in heiresses, 
which is partly, hut not wholly, dependent <>n the 
fad that childbearing is more often the accompani- 
ment of poverty than of luxurious living. 

The personal disinclination to worry attendant 
on intellectual refinement is still more likely to be 

I ed by those of high spirituality. This is 

quite natural, notwithstanding the statement of 



51 



Mr. Grant Allen, which is undoubtedly true, that 
the origin and basis of all that is best and highest 
within us is to be found in the sex-instinct. Love 
may have begotten " all higher arts and all higher 
customs," and yet love may in the process itself 
become sexless, as it is when it assumes the noblest 
form, that of divine charity for our fellowmen. 
As well might we continue to perpetuate in our 
highest actions the nature of the ape-man because 
we are descendants of this creature, as let the idea 
of sex always rule our thoughts. With the indi- 
vidual the physical influence of sex is weakened 
and finally ceases, although it ever remains con- 
stant in the race, and hence the influence of the 
idea of sex over the mind of the individual should 
be similarly affected. "InHeaven," said thefounder 
of Christianity, "there is neither marrying nor giv- 
ing in marriage," and in that highest mental con- 
dition which is heaven on earth the smsc of sex 
has ceased to be operative, having given place to 
tlie spiritual sense which is the noblest attribute of 
man because the last to be developed. 

We have here, however, a question between the 
individual and the race, and it does not affect the 
main contention that the improvement of the race, 
which includes that of the individual, is to be found 
in the application of the principle of selection. 
This must necessarily be chiefly in the heads of 
women, although both men and women must co- 



52 

operate to bring aboul the besl results, by seeking 
ii,-.i f all to improve their own natures by physi- 
cal intellectual and moral culture. The statement 
of fche case according to thai principle, and the aim 
to De attained, exhibit the dignity and importance 
of the subject of stirpiculture. Theoretically this 
is admitted on all hands, and as soon as the con- 
ditions of the subject are clearly understood there 
will be no practical difficulty in carrying the princi- 
ple into effect, so that it may have its Legitimate 
consequences. 

What parents have to realize is the necessity of 
bo training and instructing their children that they 
ni;«x become capable of being the parents of perfect 
offspring. Tin- good tree only can bear good fruit. 
But this is not the real starting point of stirpi- 
culture. An essential Eactor, and one that is sel- 
dom thought of, is the spirit in which the inception 
Of offspring is undertaken. Marria-e was t<> the 
ancients a sacred state, because it was associated 
with the religion of the domestic altar, and because 
the perpetuation of the family, which was its aim, 
was required by the necessity of having a son to 
perform the sacred rites at that altar after the 
death of his father. Th^ perpetuation of the family 
was thus a sacred duty, and the consummation of 
marriage partook of this character. According*) 
the ancient Persian religion, the union of man and 
woman is the a. a most agreeable to God, and the 



53 



act of consummation is directed to be sanctified, 
and a prayer directed to God that He would bless 
it. Marriage must be conducted in this spirit, 
rather than as a means of gratifying the passions, 
if the happiest results are to be obtained from the 
application of the principle of sexual selection. 

Spiritual Sympathy in Marriage. — That sup- 
poses, however, the existence of spiritual sympathy 
between those who are united in marriage, and 
this sympathy must form the true basis of all im • 
provements in the race. It was the neglect of this 
feature, the want of which must render any at- 
tempt to carry out Plato's ideas on the subject of 
marriage futile, that put a stop to the experiments 
undertaken by his latest imitator, Nbyes. His ad- 
herents simply made a return to the monogamy 
which is the heritage of all the Aryan peoples, and 
which is based on the union of two hearts, and not 
merely of two persons. This is the first applica- 
tion of the principle of sexual selection above the 
animal plane, and it must be continued notwith- 
standing that the range of selection is extended so 
as to embrace also the intellectual and moral planes. 

How far the State may ultimately be called on 
to aid in the improvement of the race, in accord- 
ance with the ideas we have been considering, is 
doubtful. It can aid very materially in placing re- 
straints on too early marriage, and by insisting on 



54 

the attainment of a proper standard of physical 
training and of mental culture before marriage is 
entered on. There is no reason, moreover, why the 
state should not interfere to prevent the marriage 
of those who arc too near of kin. or who by reason 
of physical or mental ailment, or by their moral 
defects are not fit subjects for the propagation of 
the race. The objection to this interference with 
personal liberty is so strong, however, that even so 
rational a procedure as preventing the spread. 
through marriage alliances, of disease and crime 
cannot yet obtain the sanction of public opinion. 
This will be educated with the general improve- 
ment of the race that must gradually take place 
through other agencies, and then the State will 
have merely t<> carry into effect the decrees of the 
people, which will be expressed in no uncertain 
language when woman has attained to the influ- 
ence to which her own perfected condition will en- 
title her. 



PRENATAL CULTURE. 



In the last preceding chapter we have considered 
the subject of the improvement of the race, es- 
pecially through the action of sexual selection, or, 
as it may be expressed, selective action in the pair- 
ing of individuals, whether brought about compul- 
sorily by the controlling influence of the State or 
some other external authority, or by the actual 
choice of one or both of the individuals immedi- 
ately concerned. We have now to deal with the 
subject of the influence over offspring of affections 
of the individual organisms from whose union such 
offspring is derived. 

Jacob's Flocks. — The story of Jacob dealing with 
the flocks of Laban, given in Genesis xxx, is usual- 
ly alluded to in corroboration of the belief that off- 
spring may be physically affected before birth, by 
anything which strongly influences the imagina- 
tion of the mother. Jacob is represented as mak- 
ing an agreement with Laban, his father-in-law, 
that Jacob should receive as his hire all the ring- 
streaked and spotted he-goats and all the black she- 
goats, and also those that were speckled and spot- 



56 

ted. When this arrangement bad been made, La- 
ban Bought to benefit by it by removing from the 
flock all the goats that answered to that descrip- 
tion, and giving them into the care of his sons, 
leaving the rest of the flock in Jacoh's charg 
This was undoubtedly an attempt on the part of 
Laban to cheat his son-in-law out of Ins wag 
but the latter was not to be so cheated, and he 

adopted a plan which gave him the pick of the 

flock, Leaving the feeble goats to his less wily 

parent. 

In describing this operation, the Bible story says: 
-And Jacob to«.k him rods of fresh poplar [or 
st., rax tree) and of the almond and of the piano 
tree, and peeled white streaks in them, and made 
the white appear which was in the rods. And he 
Bel the rods which he had peeled ever against the 
flocks in the -inters in the watering troughs where 
the flocks came to drink ; and they conceived when 
they came to drink. And the flocks conceived be- 
fore the rods, and the il.,cks brought forth ring- 
streaked, speckled and spotted. And Jacob separ- 
ated tin- lambs, and set the faces of the flockfc 
toward the ringstreaked and all the black in the 
flock of Laban; and be put his own droves apart. 
and put them not unto Laban's flock. And it came 
to pa--, whensoever the stronger of the dock did 
conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the i 
of the flock in the -inter-, that they might con- 



57 



ceive among the rods ; but when the flock were 
feeble, he put them not in : so the feebler were La- 
ban's, and the stronger Jacob's." 

Whether or not this incident actually occurred 
as stated we do not know. According to the sub- 
sequent part of the narrative, the effect of setting 
up the peeled rods was ascribed to God's interfer- 
ence in his behalf; but it is not improbable that 
we have in the story a reference to ancient shep- 
herd lore, based on the superstitious notions still 
so common in the East. In the earlier part of the 
same chapter is a story relating to mandrakes, 
which were supposed to have influence on human 
generation. Jacob is said to have used three kinds 
of rods, those of the poplar or storax tree, the al- 
mond, and the plane tree, which produced ring- 
streaked, speckled and spotted lambs. 

The influence exerted by Jacob's rods was of a 
different character from that which is supposed to 
give rise to the marking of offspring before birth, 
which is not uncommon if we are to accept as true 
all the cases mentioned in books referring to the 
subject. What occurred took place before concep- 
tion, and not subsequent to it, as in these cases. 
Nevertheless, both classes of phenomena are recog- 
nized by so competent an authority as M. Th. Ri- 
bot, who, in his ''Heredity,"* when criticising Dr. 



♦"Heredity." By Th. Kibot (New York: D. Appleton & Co. 
1875). p. 201. 






Lucas 1 explanation of the origin of the numerous 
exceptions to the law <>t* heredity, as being due to 
the operation of the law of spontaneity, affirms 
that there is no law of spontaneity, but that all 
sueli exceptions may be explained by reference to 
certain causes of diversity. M. Ribot gives three 
causes of diversity, which are: 1 — Antagonistic 
heredities of two parents; 2 — Accidental cans.s in 
action at tin- moment of generation; 3 — External 
and internal influences subsequent to conception. 
He assigns hut little importance to causes acting 
after birth, such as diet, climate, circumstance 
education, physical and moral influences, because, 
though they may produce serious effects, these are 

not radical. Possibly, however, since the advance 
made in the education of those who are born with 
defects of the sensory apparatus. M. Ribot would 
somewhat modify his opinion on that point. As to 
the causes which operate at the period of concep- 
tion, or subsequent thereto and before birth, he 

says, in relation to the latter clas^. they •• are all 
the physical and moral disturbances of uterine ex- 
istence all those influences which can act through 
the mother upon the fetus during the period of g 
tation ; impressions, emotions, defective nutrition. 
effects of imagination." He adds: "These causes 
are very real, despite the objections of Lucas, who 
attacks them in order to establish his law of spon- 
taneity. We Bee from examples thai between con- 



59 



siderable causes and their effects there exists an 
amazing disproportion." 

The causes of diversity which operate at the in- 
stant of conception depend, says Ribot, "less upon 
the physical and moral natures of the parents than 
on the particular state in which they are at the 
moment of procreation. " This fact is referred to 
by M. de Quatrefages as fully proving the univers- 
ality of the law of heredity, and M. Ribot adds, 
' ' It enables us to understand that those transitory 
states which exist at the moment of conception 
may exert a decisive influence on the nature of the 
being procreated, so that often, where now we see 
only spontaneity, a more perfect knowledge of the 
causes at work would show us heredity. " 

Professor E. D. Cope, the well-known author of 
"The Origin of the Fittest," would seem to doubt 
the truth of the stories of birthmarks on the ground 
that "the effect of temporary impressions on the 
mother is not strong enough to counterbalance the 
molecular structure established by impressions of- 
tener repeated throughout much longer periods of 
time." * And yet there is no doubt that birth- 
marks do occasionally occur, although it is very 
difficult to obtain properly authenticated cases of 
them. 



* "The Origin of the Fittest." By E. D. Cope (D. Appleton & Co., 
New York). Page 408. 



60 



An [llustrative Case.— How greal Istheinflu- 
ence on unborn offspring of the mother's mental 
condition, as well as the effect over them of pleas- 
ant surroundings, is shown by the following case. 
A Noun- girl attracted attention by her beauty and 
by the superiority of the type she exhibited over 
that of either of her parents, and on her mother 
being spoken to on the subject she remarked: 

•■ I,, m y early married Life my husband and I 
Learned how to Live in holy relations, after God's 
dinance. M\ husband lovingly consented to Let me 
Live apart from him during the time I carried this 
Little daughter under my heart, and also while I 
nursing her. Those were the happiest days of my 
Life. Every day before my child was born, I could 
have hugged myself with delight at the prospect of 
becoming a mother. My husband and I werenever 
tenderly, so harmoniously, or so happily related 
to each other, and I never Loved him more deeply 
ll;lll during those blessed months. 1 was sur- 
rounded by all beautiful things, and one picture oi 
a Lovely face was especially in my thought. My 
daug hter looks more like that picture than she does 
like either of as . From the time she was born she 
was Like an exquisite —laid the flowerofpure, 
sanctified, happj Love. She never cried at night, 
wa8 Q ever fretful or nervous, but was all smiles 
;lI1(1 winning baby ways, filling our hearts and 

home with perpetual gladness. To this day, and 



61 



she is now fourteen years old, I have never had 
the slightest difficulty in bringing her up. She 
turns naturally to the right, and I never knew her 
to be cross or impatient or hard to manage. She 
has given me only comfort ; and I realize from an 
experience of just the opposite nature that the rea- 
son of all this is because my little girl had her 
birthright." 

The future experience of this lady was, however, 
of a very different nature. She added : 

" A few years later I was again about to become 
a mother, but with what different feelings ! My 
husband had become contaminated with the popu- 
lar idea that even more and frequent relations were 1 
permissible during pregnancy. I was powerless 
against this wicked sophistry, and was obliged to 
yield to his constant desires. But how I suffered 
and cried ; how wretched I was ; how nervous and 
almost despairing ! Worst of all, I felt my love 
and trusting faith turning to dread and repulsion. 

"My little boy, on whom my husband set high 
hopes, was born after nine of the most unhappy, 
distressing months of my life, a sickly, nervous, 
fretting child — myself in miniature, and after five 
years of life that was predestined by all the cir- 
cumstances to be just what it was, after giving us 
only anxiety and care, he died, leaving us sadder 
and wiser. 

"I have demonstrated to my own abundant satis- 



62 

faction that there is bul one right, Bod-given way 
to beget and rear children, and I know thai I am 
only one of many who can corroborate this testi- 
mony ."" 

The following case of prenatal culture appeared 
in The Philosphical Journal for October 5, li 
above the signature of "John Allyn," who says : 

"About forty years ago 1 was a neighbor of a 
young couple who had been recently married. 
They were of fair natural abilities, bul not highly 
educated. The wife could play on the piano well 
and accompany it with her voice. The husband 
was a house-building contractor. Before their first 
child was bom the wife was provided with instru- 
ments for drawing, and interested herself in their 
use and mathematical calculations connected with 
their use. The child proved to be a hoy. who took 
to architectural drawing as by instinct. With very 
little efforl he became proficient, and is now em- 
ployed at a high salary by the Southern Pacific 
Railroad as their architect. 

"Some years later, before the second child was 
born, the mother interested herself with music with 
reference to the effeel it would have on the unborn 
child. This child proved to ho a girl, who is now 
mi experl Binger, finding ready employment in 
opera companies. Though not a -tar. she ha- a 
superior talenl (^v music which i nabled her i" take 
advantages of musical training easily. n 



63 



Beliefs of Primitive Peoples. — Whenever such 
cases happen, it is under the influence of some very 
strong emotion, during the period of gestation, 
arising from the action on the nervous system of 
the mother by an external object presented to the 
sight, the organ of which would seem to have an 
intimate association with the general muscular sys • 
tern. There is nothing to show that primitive peo- 
ples recognize the action of prenatal influence 
through the senses ; but there is a very curious cus- 
tom, which is so widespread at the present time that 
we may well suppose it to have been formerly 
almost universal, dependent upon the imagined 
effect of the eating of animal flesh. All primitive 
peoples believe that a man acquires physical or 
mental characteristics from animals of whose flesh 
he partakes. Cannibalism is so closely connected 
with this notion; as the man who eats part of the 
body of a foe is thought to become endowed with 
the victim's courage, strength or other special 
quality. Probably the Mosaic regulations as to un- 
clean animals, that is, animals unfit for food, was 
based on such an idea; and certainly the command 
to abstain from eating blood was thus connected; 
as we are told the blood is the life, and if so, then 
it must be the carrier of vital influences. 

The custom above referred to, which is known to 
ethnologists as la couvade, or "hatching," sup- 
poses injurious action on the organism of the child 



64 

f f 00 d eaten b} its parents, as appears from the 
facts brought together bj Dr. E. B. Tylor in his 
"Researches into the Early History of Mankind." 
The couvade usually has reference to the period 
immediately following the birth of a child; bul 
among the native tribes of South A. ...Tien, where 
it is more extensively prevalent than elsewhere, 
it i s observed while the child is still unborn. Thus, 
in Brazil, according to Von Martius, "A stricl 
regimen is preserved before the birth ; the man and 
the woman refrain for a time from the flesh of cer- 
tain animals, and live chiefly on fish and fruits." 
The peculiarity of the couvade custom, and thai 
which gives it its special interest, is the fad thai 
it usually concerns the father and nol the mother, 
as injury to the child is supposed to be due to the 
^ondud of the former rather than of the latter. 
Thus, among the Land Dyaks of Borneo, "The 
husband, before the birth of his child, may do no 
work with a sharp instrument, excepl whal is 
necessary for the farm; aor may he fire guns, aor 
strike animals, nor do any violent work, Lesl had 
influences should affecl the child: and after it is 
born the father is kept in seclusion indoors for 
, ,,,i days, and dieted on rice and Bait, to pre- 
ven \ no1 his own bu1 his child's Btomach from 

swelling." 

II,.,,. food abstinence takes place after the birth 
, i the child, but, according to Brett, in Guinea 



c 



65 



"Some of the Acawois and Caribi nations, when 
they have reason to expect an increase of their 
families consider themselves bound to abstain from 
certain kinds of meat, lest the expected child 
should, in some mysterious way. be injured by the 
partaking of it. The acouri (or agouti) is thus 
tabooed, lest, like that little animal, the child 
should be meager ; the haimara. also, lest it should 
be blind — the outer coating of the eye of the fish 
suggesting film or cataract ; the labba, lest the 
infant's mouth should protrude like the labba's, or 
lest it be spotted like the labba, which spots would 
ultimately become sores." 

Another related case, of more recent observation. 
is that of the Motumotu of New Guinea, who say 
that after conception the motlier must not eat 
sweet potato or taro, lest the head of the child 
grow out of proportion, and the father must not 
eat crocodile or several kinds of fish, lest the child's 
legs grow out of proportion. At Suan, a husband 
shuts himself up for some days after the birth of 
his first child, and will eat nothing.* 

Various explanations of the custom of couvade 
have been offered, and probably C. Staniland Wake 
is right when he states that it is connected with the 
idea that the father is the real source of the child's 



♦"Pioneering in New Guinea." By James Chalmers. 1887. 
PagelG5. 



nn 



life.* As he points out, on the authority of M. 
Girard-Teulon, among the European Basques, even 
at the present day, a husband enters his wife's 
abode only "for the purpose of reproduction, and 
to work for the benefit of his wife." Mr. Wake re- 
marks that, "With some of the Brazilian tribes, 
when a man becomes a father he goes to bed in- 
stead of his wife, and all the women of the village 
come to console him "for tin- pain and suffering 
he has had in making this child." This agrees with 
the idea entertained by so many peoples that the 
child is derived from the father only, tin- mother 
being merely its nourisher. When such an idea is 
held, it is not surprising if. as among tie' Alripones, 
the belief is formed that " the father's carelessness 
influences the new-born offspring, from a natural 
bond and sympathy of both," or if the father ab- 
stains, either before or after the child's birth, from 
eating any food, or performing any actions which 
are thought capable of doing it harm. Still more 
so, if the child is regarded, as is sometimes the 

case, as the reincarnation of the father, a notion 
which is supported by the fact, pointed out by Mr. 
Gerald Massey, that in the couvade the parent 
identifies himself with the infant child, into which 
he has been typically transformed. 



i. velopment of Marriage and Kinship/' (Bedwiy, London. 



67 



That conclusion agrees with the opinion expressed 
by Mr. Tylor, that the couvade ' ' implicitly denies 
that physical separation of ' individuals ' which a 
civilized man would probably set down as a first 
principle common by nature to all mankind. . . . 
It shows us a number of distinct and distant tribes 
deliberately holding the opinion that the connec- 
tion between father and child is not only, as we 
think, a mere relation of parentage, affection, duty, 
but that their very bodies are joined by a physical 
bond, so that what is done to the one acts directly 
upon the other."* The couvade custom is thus 
closely connected with the question of the special 
relationship of a child to one or other of its parents. 
Curious notions on this subject have been formed 
from time to time; but the ancients almost uni- 
versally entertained the idea held by the Greeks 
that "the father, as endowed with creative power, 
was clothed with the divine character, but not the 
mother, who was only the bearer and nourisher of 
the child." Professor Hearn accepts this view in 
his work, "The Aryan Household," and suggests 
as the Aryan thought on the subject: "A male 
was the first founder of the house. His descend- 
ants have 'the nature of the same blood' as he. 
They, in common, possess the same mysterious 



* "Development of Marriage and Kinship." (Kedway, London. 
1889.) Page 292. 



G8 

principle of Life. The life spark, bo to speak, has 
been once kindled, and 'ns identity, in all its trans- 
missions, must be preserved. But the father is the 
Life-giver. Be alone transmits the Life Bpark, which 
from his father he received. The daughter 
ceives, indeed, the principle of Life, but she cannol 

transmit it." 

M. Ribot, who, as we have seen, endorses the 
Popular belief as to tin- possibility of the fetus be- 
ing affected, during uterine existence, through the 
organism of the mother, reduces all the obscure 
causes of deviation from heredity to two class 
Of these, the first is the disproportion of effects to 
causes, already mentioned; and the second is the 
transformation of heredity. As to the nrsl of these 
causes, he lays it down as a general truth that 
- the more complicated the mechanism, the greater 
the disproportion between accidental causes and 
their effects." He supports this conclusion by refer- 
ence to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's researches on the 

production of monsters, and ho affirms that the dis- 
proportion between cause and effect cannot he fore- 
o by measuring, hut is known only by experi- 
ence, as •■ psychological laws are analogous now to 
mechanical and now to chemical Laws," bo that it 
i. impossible to proceed by deduction from causes 
toeffects." (Page 207.) 

BlRTHM LRKS RARE. And yel the wry fact that 

es of birthmarks are comparatively rare, prov< a 



69 



the greatly preponderating influence of heredity 
over the constitution of the offspring, modified by 
the disposition of the parents at the time of pro- 
creation. Professor Cope has some explanatory re- 
marks on that subject which deserve quotation. 
He 'says — after referring to the hypothesis that 
growth-force may be, through the motive force of 
the animal, directed to any locality, whether the 
commencement of an executive organ has begun or 
not — that " A difficulty in the way of this hypothe- 
sis is the frequently unyielding character of the 
structure of adult animals, and the difficulty of 
bringing sufficient pressure to bear on them with- 
out destroying life. B"t, in fact, the modifications 
must, in most instances, take place during the 
period of growth. It is well known that the men- 
tal characteristics of the father are transmitted 
through the spermatozoid, and that, therefore, the 
molecular movements which produce the mechan- 
ism of such mental characters must exist in the 
spermatozoid. But the material of the spermato- 
zoid is combined with that of the ovum, and the 
embryo is compounded of the animal contents of 
both bodies. In a wonderful way the embryo de- 
velops into a being which resembles one or both 
parents in minute details. This result is evidently 
determined by the molecular and dynamic charac- 
ter of the original reproductive cells which neces- 
sarily communicate their properties to the embryo 



7U 



which is produced by their subdivisions." Prof< 
sor ( 'ope goes on to say, " Richard Bering has iden- 
tified this property of the original (•••lis with the 
faculty of memory. This is a brilliant thought, 
and, under restriction, probably correct. The sen- 
sations of persons who have suffered amputation 
show thai their sensorium maintained a pictureor 
map of the body so far as regards the Location of 
nil its sensitive regions. This simulserum is invest- 
ed with consciousness whenever the proper stimu- 
lus is applied, and the character of the stimulus 18 
fixed by it. This picture probably resides in many 
of the colls, both sensory and motor, and it proba- 
bly does so in the few cells of simple and low forms 
of life. The spermatozoid is such a cell. and. how 
or why we know not, also contains such an arrange 
meiit of its contents, and contains and communi- 
cates such a type of force. It is probable that in 
the brain-cell this is the condition of memory pf 
locality. If, now. an intense and Long-continued 
pressure of stimulus produces an unconscious pic- 
ture <>f Borne organ of the body in the mind, there 
is reason to suppose that the energies communi- 
cated t«» the embryo by the spermatozoid and ovum 
will partake of the memory thus created. The 
onlj reason why the oft-repeated stories of birth- 
marks are so often untrue, Ls because the effect <>t 
temporary impressions on the mother is not str< 
enough to counterbalance the molecular structure 



71 

established by impressions often repeated through- 
out much larger periods of time." * 

Why Children Resemble Parents. — That chil- 
dren reproduce the general and physical and men- 
tal characteristics of their parents in combination 
is unquestionable truth, although the particular 
mode in which they are communicated is yet un- 
determined, notwithstanding the fact mentioned by 
Professor Cope that they are somehow conveyed 
by the microscopic serum and germ in the union 
of which the new being has its beginning. Thus 
every individual must possess the general charac- 
teristics of the primitive human family from which 
through a vast number of ancestors he has de- 
scended. And yet at every stage of descent the 
organism may have obtained fresh characters, or 
at least have undergone some modification. As re- 
marked by Dr. G. H. Th. Zeimer, '"Every charac- 
ter which must have been formed through the ac- 
tivity of the organism is an acquired character. 
All characters, therefore, which have been devel- 
oped by exertion are acquired, and these characters 
are inherited from generation to generation. The 
same holds for all organs atrophied through dis- 
ease — the degree of atrophy is acquired and in- 
herited. In the first class we see especially the 



* " Development of Marriage and Kinship." (Redway, London, 
1889.) Page 407. 



72 

action of direct adaptation; in the Becond, the re- 
sults of the cessation of the action. A third cl 
of acquired characters are to be traced simply to 
the immediate action of the environment on the 
organism, and. originally, at the commencem< nt of 
their appearance, all characters musl have belonged 
to this class." :i: We have here a genera] argument 
in opposition to the theory propounded by Profes- 
sor Weismann, that acquired characters are not 
transmissible. Elsewhere (page 382) Dr. Eimer ob- 
serves: "Phyletic growth, or the evolution of the 
organic world ever into higher and more complex 
forms, or at least into forms of different structure, 
is, as I have said, merely the sum of the pro< ess( - 
of growth of the ancestors — together with the re- 
sult of external influences on the forms during their 
development and their existence. This additional 
modification which the individuals as such Under 
is — together with the influence of crossing— the 
very cause of the constantly progressing evolution. 

All that the members of a series of individuals 

directly connected by descent acquire constitutes 

together the material for the formation of a iew 
sjmm-p 8." 

Life's Experiences Affecting Child.— Unless 
characteristics acquired l>\ an Individual, that i-. 



* " Oi luti.Mi .'" Translated by J. P. Cunningham, Al. A. 

Ion, Ma. ■mill. m A C 



73 



the modifications of the organism due to his own 
life experiences, are capable of being handed down 
to his offspring, it is difficult to see how any prog- 
ress could be made in the development of the race. 
Weismann's declaration that acquired characters 
are not transmissible was a surprise to the scientific 
world when first made, but it has been accepted by 
many Darwinians. His conclusion is dependent on 
his doctrine of heredity, which differs from that 
propounded by Darwin, but is by no means new ; 
as its leading ideas, as pointed out by Professor 
G. J. Romanes,* are largely a reproduction of those 
of Mr. Francis Galton, whose work on heredity at- 
tracted much attention when first published. The 
views of Darwin, Galton and Weismann on that 
subject have been compared by Professor Romanes, 
who explains the distinction between them. He 
says (page 133), after referring to the supposed con- 
tinuity of the germ-plasm, common to the theories 
of Galton and Weismann, but not required by that 
of Darwin, "The three theories may be ranked 
thus — The particulate elements of heredity all pro- 
ceed centripetally from somatic-cells to germ-cells 
(gemmules) : the inheritance of acquired characters 
is therefore habitual. 

' ' These particulate elements proceed for the most 



* "Examination of Weismannism." The Open Court Publishing 
Co., Chicago. 1893. 



74 



part, though not exclusively, from germ-cells to 
somatic-cells (stirp): the inheritance of acquired 
characters is therefore but occasional. 

•• The elements in question proceed exclusively in 
the centrifugal direction Last mentioned (germ- 
plasm): the inheritance of acquired characters is 
therefore impossible." 

The firsl of these theories is that of Darwin, and 
the last that of Weismann, whose notion of the 
continuity of germ-plasm supposes that no part of 
an organism generates any of the formative mate- 
rial which goes to make up its offspring. This 
material is regarded in much the same light as the 
sperm which the male parent confides to the keep- 
ing of the female, according to the notion of the 
ancient world above referred to. For, as Romaic - 
stai.s (page 26): " In each generation a small por- 
tion of this substance [germ-plasm] is told off to 
develop a new body to lodge and nourish the ever- 
growing and never-dying germ-plasm— this new 
body, therefore, resembling its so-called parent 
body simply because it lias been developed from 
( „ lt . and the same mass of formative material; and, 

lastly, that this formative material, or germ-plasm, 

has been continuous through all generations of suc- 

lv peri-hin- bodies, which therefore stand to 

,1 m much the same relation as annual shootfi to a 
perennial Btem: the BUOOts resemble one another 



75 



simply because they are all grown from one and 
the same stock." 

Although Professor Weismann denies that ac- 
quired characters, that is, individual peculiarities 
arising as the result of personal experience, are 
transmitted, he admits that congenital characters, 
that is, peculiarities with which an individual is 
born, are transmitted to offspring. As congenital 
characters must, originally, have been individual, 
it is not easy at first sight to perceive Weismann's 
real meaning. It is necessary, therefore, to enter 
more particularly into a consideration of his theory, 
which he regards as in general accord with Dar- 
win's theory of pangenesis. Darwin supposes that 
all the cells of the body continually give off great 
numbers of genunules, which are conveyed by the 
blood and deposited in the germ-cells of the organ- 
ism. These cells are thus endowed with the power 
of developing a new organism of the same kind, 
each gemmule reproducing the cell from which it 
was derived. These ultimate vital units are called 
by Weismann biophers, but he supposes them not 
to be the ultimate "bearers of vitality/' They are 
said to be arranged in groups to which the term 
determinants is applied, and these groups are com- 
bined so as to form ancestral ids or germ-plasms. 
Each determinant, which is made up of perfectly 
definite numbers and combinations of biophors, is 
the primary constituent of a particular cell, or of 



76 



a group of cells, such as a bl I corpuscle. The 

determinants thus " control the cell by breaking up 
int., biophors, whirl, migrate into the cell body 
through the nuolear membrane, multiply there, 
arrange themselves according to the forces within 
lhl . m . IMll determine the histological structure ol 
,,,,. cell> » impressing upon it its inherited specific 
character. The structure of the cell, ana of every 
subsequent stage, exists therefore potentially in the 
inherited structure of the id, and the determination 
of its character "depends on the biophors winch 
the corresponding determinant contains, and which 
it transmits to the cell." 

G BE M-PLASM.-While Weismann regarded germ- 
plasm as absolutely stable, the only mode by which 
congenital variation could be brought aboul was 
thai of amphimixis, or intermingling of individuals 
in the p r0 cess of generation. As modified, how- 
ever by his latest work, "The Germ-plasm, a 
Theory of Heredity," published in 1893, his theory 
now allows the plasm to be capable of modification, 

and he ascribes thai variation to the direcl em 
of external influences on the biophors and deter- 
minants of the germ-plasm The instability ol this 

substance is so slight, I 'ever, thai congenital 

variations cannol be acted on and perpetuated by 

natural selection, and the influen. f amphimixis 

i 8 thus required for the purpose. Mr. Berberl 



77 



Spencer, however, in criticising Weismanns the- 
ory, declares that "functionally produced modifi- 
cations of structure are transmissible," and he re- 
fers in support of his contention to the remarkable 
effect of arrested nutrition on the structure and 
habits of wasps and bees. It especially affects the 
reproductive organs, and hence there is no occasion 
to call in the aid of amphimixis to perpetuate the 
variations produced, its office being the blending 
of the elements on which the characteristics of off- 
spring depend. 

If it be asked how modifications are actually 
transmitted, we may say that it can be only by an 
affection of the germ-cell. This probably takes 
place by deviations in the structure of what Weis- 
mann calls determinants, or of groups of deter- 
minants, through rearrangement of their primary 
units. The modification would be preceded, how- 
ever, by a corresponding change in the nerve cen- 
ters concerned in the use or disuse of the organs 
affected. Mr. Spencer shows that under certain 
conditions changes take place in the conduct of cer- 
tain insects, and that '" the maternal activities and 
instincts undergo analogous changes,"* facts which 
point to a loss of nervous energy and to an inti- 
mate connection between the nervous system and 
the reproductive function. Use or disuse first in- 
creases or diminishes the activity of certain nerve 



* The Contemporary Review, September, 1893. 



78 



centers, and this leads to a modification of the 
corresponding germ-cells. If sq, the determinants, 
instead <>f being first affected, as proposed bj Weia- 
mann, and thns determining the variations, are in 
reality modified as the result of the functional 
changes, and arc thus capable of transmitting th< 
changes to succeeding generations. 

In a subsequenl article, published in The Con- 
temporary Review for October, L894, Mr. Spencer 
recapitulates his argument in favor of the trans- 
mission of acquired characters, and refers to ob- 
servations made by Professor Bertwigand others, 
which he regards as " showing, firstly, that all the 
multiplying cells of the developing embryo are 
alike; and, secondly, thai the soma-cells of the 
adult severally retain, in a latent form, all the pow- 
ers of the original embryo-cell," facts which he 
rightly considers disproves Weismann's hypothesis 
of panmixia. It' this is surrendered, then. Bays Mr. 
Spencer, "all thai evidence collected by Mr. Dar- 
win and others, regarded by them as proof of the 
inheritance of acquired characters, which wascav 
alierly sel aside on the strength of this alleged 
process of panmixia is reinstated. And this rein- 
stated evidence, joined with much evidence since 
furnished, suffices to establish the repudiated inter- 
pretation." 

Great stress was laid by Professor Weismann, as 
evidence in support of his theory, on the supposed 



79 



fact that the inheritance of injuries sustained dur- 
ing life has not been proved. Particular attention 
has been paid to this point by Dr. Eimer, in relation 
to which he remarks : " That injuries incurred dur- 
ing life are but seldom transmitted to the offspring 
does not appear to me wonderful: the inheritance 
of the complete form and complete activities of the 
organism, which took root such enormously long 
periods of time ago, and has been strengthened at 
each generation, will, as a rule, counterbalance in 
the offspring any such injuries incurred only once 
and not repeated." * This is the same argument as 
was used, as quoted above, by Professor (.'ope. to 
disprove the occurrence of birthmarks, and Dr. Ei- 
mer goes on to state that there are injuries which 
are not transmitted to offspring, although they are 
constantly repeated, as an instance of which he re- 
fers to the rupture of the hymen. He adds, how- 
ever : k ' In such cases we must presume a specially 
effective power of correlative activity, directed to 
the part affected and residing in the whole organ- 
ism — the same compensating power which leads in 
lower animals, during the life of the individual, 
to the regeneration of parts which have been lost 
or artificially removed. But these cases do not 
prove the general proposition that injuries are not 



* " Organic Evolution." Translated by J. T. Cunningham, M. A. 
London, Macniillan & Co., 1890.) Page 13. 



80 

inherited; they do not prove thai even injuries 
which have been repeated during a considerable 
period are ao1 inherited. Eitherto little Importance 
has been attached to the demonstration of the in- 
heritance of injuries. Xel single cases of the in- 
heritance of injuries only once incurred seem to in- 
to he thoroughly authentic." 

Congenital Deformities. -Professor Weismann, 
in replying to the criticisms of Professor Virchow, 
admitted the existence of a number of congenital 
deformities, birthmarks and other individual pecu- 
liarities, which are inherited, bu1 he affirms that 
we do not know from what causes they first ap- 
peared, and thai a -Teat proportion of them pro- 
,1 from the germ itself, and are due. therefore, 
to alteration of the gemiinal substance. There is 
no proof of this, however, according to Dr. Ehm 
who appeals to various facts in support of his con- 
tention that injuries and diseases are inherited. 
He thinks the deg< aeration of the tail in the higher 
mammals is a case in point, although it lias re- 
quired greal periods of time to complete. Among 
other instances of inherited injuries mentioned by 
Dr. Eimerisone in which a scar over the left ear 
and temple, caused to a girl by being thrown from 

carriage, was transmitted to her bod and grand- 
son the son of the latter also showing absence of 



»nic Evolution," i 



81 



hair on the injured spot, although the defect gradu- 
ally disappeared with him, nearly a hundred years 
after the accident. The case of Dr. Nosseler, who 
inherited from his mother a crushed finger joint, 
caused by an accident which happened two years 
before his birth, would seem to be conclusive proof 
that injuries are transmissible. Dr. Eimer refers 
also to the breeding of short-tailed pointers from 
dogs whose tails had been artificially shortened ; 
and also to Brown-Sequard's experiments with 
guinea pigs, in which epilepsy was inherited by 
their offspring, who showed also the loss of certain 
phalanges, or even whole toes of the hind feet, the 
parents having suffered a similar loss owing to the 
division of the sciatic nerve. He adds that numer- 
ous other instances of the inheritance of injuries 
have been recorded, as ''inheritance <>f the arti- 
ficially shortened tail of the bull, of artificially pro- 
duced hornlessncss in cattle many cases of inherit- 
ance in man of curvature in a ringer, caused by 
injury, inheritance of the absence of one eye which 
had been lost by the father during life or by dis- 
ease, etc." 

The question of the inheritance of deformities 
and diseases, and the causes of the germ-variations 
on which it depends, have been considered by Zeig- 
ler, whose conclusions, as quoted by Dr. Eimer 
(page 186), are too important to be omitted. The 
causes which Zeigler assigns for the origin of such 



82 



germ-variations are of three kinds. These are : I 
Union of sexua] nuclei which are not adapted for 
copulation; a— Disturbance of the copulatory pro- 
58 itself; 3— Injurious influences which affect the 
:ual auclei or the fertilized ovum at a time when 
separation of the sexual colls from the body cells 
has nut yet occurred "If the embryo is injurious- 
ly affected at a later period," says Zeigler, " either 
a malformation or a constitutional anomaly arises, 
which is not inherited, or only the sexual cells are 
injured, in which case the body-cells develop nor- 
mally, and a disturbance shows itself only in the 
development of the n«\t generation." The union 
of sexual nuclei not adapted for copulation appears, 
however, to he "the most frequent mid most im- 
portant cause of hereditary local malformations as 
well as <>< hereditary morbid tendencies, or of a 
defect in any system of the whole organism." If 

the nuclei are altogether uuadapted to each otic r. 

sterility occurs, as in the sexual nuclei <A' distinct 
species. 

Psychical Diseases. -Zeigler's conclusions are 
supported by reference to the enquiries of the distin- 
guished psychiatrist, D. Von Kraft-Ebings, who has 
considered the heredity of psychical diseases, and 

m connectiou therewith mentions tin-' - " atial 

facts" which it is necessary to keep in view when 
dealing with that subject. The firsl of these facts 



83 



is Atavism, by which "the bodily and mental or- 
ganization and character can be transmitted from 
the first to the third generation, without any neces- 
sity that the second and intermediate one should 
exhibit the peculiarities of the first — thus the con- 
dition of the- life and health of the grandparents 
are of interest for us." Secondly, '"Only in rare 
cases is the actual disease transmitted in procre- 
ation (congenital insanity, heredity syphilis), as a 
rule only the disposition thereto. Actual disease 
only occurs when accessory injurious influences 
produce an effect based upon that disposition. . . . 
We must, therefore, consider also the state of 
health of the relatives (uncles, cousins, aunts), and 
since here also the law of atavism holds good, the 
possible diseases of great-uncles and great-aunts." 
Thirdly, Dr. Von Krafft Ebings says, "Only excep- 
tionally does the same disease develop in ascendant 
as in descendant lines, in consequence of the trans- 
mission of morbid dispositions. On the contrary, 
there exists a remarkable variability in the forms 
of disease which may almost claim the value o^ a 
law (the law of polymorphism or transmutation).*' 

This law is referred to by M. Ribot as one of the 
causes of deviation from heredity, and he speaks 
of it as "transformation." As examples of trans- 
formation of heredity, Ribot refers to fixed ideas 
in the progenitor, which may become in the de- 
scendants "melancholy, taste for meditation, apti- 



34 



tude for the exact sciences, energy of will, etc. ;" 
the man ia of progenitors may be changed in the 
descendants into "aptitude forth, arts, Liveli* 
of imagination, quickness of mind, inconsistency in 
desires, sudden and variable will. "Jus1 as real in- 
sanity." says Moreau of Tours, "may be hereditari- 
lv reproduced only under the form of eccentricity, 
ma y be transmitted from progenitors to descend- 
ants only in modified form, and in more or Less 
mitigated character, so a state of simple eccen- 
tricity in theparenl a state which is no more than 
a peculiarity or a strangeness <>< character— may in 
fche children be the origin of true insanity. Thus 
in transformations of heredity we sometimes have 
the germ attaining its maximum intensity; and 
again, a maximum of activity may reverl to the 



minimum." 



It should be homo inmind, as mentioned by \ 
£rafft-Ebings,t thai everything which debilitates 
the nervous system and the generative powers ol 
the parents, "be LI immaturity or too advanced old 
previous debilitating diseases (typhus, syphi- 
lis), mercurial treatment, alcoholic and sexual ex- 
.verwork, etc., may give rise to neuropathic 

constitutions, and thereby indirectly to < very possi- 
ble nervous disease in the descendants." 

; • Evolution," pag< 211, 
t Op. oifc., page 201, 



85 

Telegony. — There is one remarkable phenome- 
non, spoken of by various writers as telegony, 
which has an important bearing on the subject of 
the transmission of acquired characters, and shows 
the action of prenatal influence in an unexpected 
form. It is . referred to by Professor Romanes, 
when he says, "It has not unfrequently been ob- 
served, at any rate in mammals, that when a fe- 
male has borne progeny to a male of one variety. 
and subsequently bears progeny to a male of an- 
other variety, the younger progeny presents a more 
or less unmistakable resemblance to the father of 
the older one.*' * This curious fact was considered, 
in relation to plants especially, by Darwin, who af- 
firms, as quoted by Romanes, that it is of the high- 
est theoretical importance, as "The male element 
not only affects, in accordance with its proper 
function, the germ, but at the same time various 
parts of the mother-plant, in the same manner as 
it affects the same parts in the seminal offspring 
from the same two parents. We thus learn that an 
ovule is not indispensable for the reception of the 
influence of the male element." 

The curious phenomenon of telegony is not limit- 
ed, however, to plants. Mr. Herbert Spencer drew 
attention, in The Contemporary Review for March, 
1893, to a case which has long been known to horse- 



* "Examination of Weismannism," page 77. 






breeders, and which may be said to have become 
classic. The facts were brought, by the Bar] of 
Morton, to the attention of the Royal Society of 
Great Britain, as long ago as the year L820. The 

Karl, who possessed a male quagga, said, in a Letter 
to the President: " I tried to breed from the male 
quagga and a young chestnul mare of seven- 
eighths Arabian blood, and which had never hen 
bred from; the result was the production of a fe- 
male hybrid, now five years old, and bearing, both 
in her form and in her clour, very decided indica- 
tions of her mixed origin. I subsequently parted 
with the Beven-eighths Arabian mare to Sir Gore 
Ouseley, who has bred from her by a very fine 
black Arabian horse. I yesterday morning exam- 
ined the produce, namely, a two-year-old filly and 
a one-year-old colt. They have the character of 

the Arabian breed as decidedly as can be expected, 
where fifteen-sixteenths of the blood are Arabian; 
and they are tine specimens of thai breed; but both 
in their colour and in tin 4 hair of their manes they 
have a striking resemblance to the quagga. Their 

Colour is bay. marked more or less like the qua.. 

in a darker tint. Both are distinguished by the 
dark line along the ridge of the back, the dark 
stripes across the forehead, and the dark bars 
across the back part of the legs." Mr. Spencer re- 
fers to an analogous case of the influence of a wild 
boar over the subsequent progeny of a domestic 



87 



sow, and it now appears that such effects are not so 
uncommon as the scientific world has supposed. 

Professor Romanes made particular enquiries on 
this subject of professional and amateur breeders 
of animals, and he says most of his correspondents 
"are quite persuaded that it is of frequent occur- 
rence, many of them regard it as a general rule, 
while some of them go so far as to make a point of 
always putting a mare, bitch, etc., to a good pedi- 
gree male in her first season, so that her subse- 
quent progenies may be benefited by his influence, 
even though they be engendered by inferior sires."* 
His own more modest conclusion is that the evi- 
dence he obtained ' ' is enough to prove the fact of 
a previous sire asserting his influence on a subse- 
quent progeny, although this fact is one of com- 
paratively rare occurrence." 

The English Darwinian met with only one case 
in which the offspring of a woman by a second hus- 
band, who was a white man. showed the influence 
of her first husband, who was a negro. Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer would seem to have been more suc- 
cessful. In The Contemporary Review for May, 
1893, Mr. Spencer gives the result of his own en- 
quiries as to the effect on a white woman's subse- 
quent progeny of a previous union with a negro, 
and he quotes the opinion of a u distinguished cor- 



Examination of Weismannism," page 22. 



38 

respondent," thai information given to him many 
years ago was to the effect that "the children of 
white women by a white father had been repeatedly 
observed to show traces of black blood, in cases 
where the woman had previous connexion with 
[i.e., a child by] a negro." Mr. Spencer refers also 
to Professor Marsh as authority for such a ca* 
and to the opinion of several medical professors 
who assured him, through Dr. W. J. Youmans, 
thai the alleged result "is generally accepted as a 
fact." He gives as authoritative testimony the fol- 
lowing statement by Dr. Austin Flint, taken from 
his "Text-book of Human Physiology:" "A pe- 
culiar and, it seems to me, an inexplicable fact is, 
thai previous pregnancies had an influence upon 
offspring. This is well known fco breeders of ani- 
mals. If pure blooded marcs or bitches have been 
once covered by an inferior male in subsequent 
fecundations the young are likely to partake of the 
character of the first male, even if they be bred 
with males of unimpeachable pedigree. What the 
mechanism of the influence of the first conception 
[ Sj ii [ 8 impossible to say; bu1 the facl is incont< st- 
able. The Bame influence is observed in the human 
subject. A woman may have, by a second hus- 
band, children who resemble a former husband, 
and this is particularly well marked in certain in- 
stances by the color of the hair and eyes, A white 
woman who has had children l»\ a uegro maj bud- 



89 



sequently bear children to a white man, these chil- 
dren presenting some of the unmistakable pecu- 
liarities of the negro race." 

This phenomenon would alone seem to answer 
the question of the transmission of acquired char- 
acters in the affirmative, for its explanation is to be 
found in the facts brought out by Darwin, as to 
the action of foreign pollen on the structure of the 
mother plant ; in relation to which Professor Ro- 
manes remarks : " When one variety fertilizes the 
ovules of another not unf requently the influence ex- 
tends beyond the ovules to the ovarium, and even 
to the calyx and flower-stalk, of the mother plant. 
This influence, which may affect the shape, size, 
colour, and texture of the somatic tissues of the 
mother, has been observed in a large number of 
plants belonging to many different orders.'' * May 
we not have here the explanation of the fact, which 
has frequently been pointed out, that husband and 
wife show a tendency to grow like each other, both 
physically and mentally, the resemblance after a 
long married life being sometimes very striking? 

Power of Heredity. — The most important fact 
brought out in the discussion of the possibility of 
the transmission of acquired characters is the power 
of heredity. If organisms did not reproduce their 



Examination of Weisniannism," page 79. 



90 



own special characteristics, there could be no fixity 
of form and noorder m organic nature. Neverthe- 
less, if there were do change by individual modi- 
acation or divergence, in whatever way this may 
be rendered permanent in the race, there could be 
no evolution. Eence we can say, with Dr. Eimer, 
••Any one who thus completely renders allegiance 
to the supremacy of the principles of the unity of 
the organic world, who rejects everything which 
contradicts that principle cannot help admitting 
bhai in fc ru th, as I assert, the ultimate origin of the 
various kinships in the animal and vegetable king- 
dom is to be traced to individual differences, and 
thai the difference between the former, hike the 
latter, musl be essentially determined by external 
conditions, by the modification of organic growth." 
The causes of diversity which interfere with the 
action of heredity may operate, as we have seen, 
at the moment of conception, or subsequent tocon- 
ception. The former class of causes is of great im- 
portance, in accordance with the principle, hud 
down b3 M. Ribot, of the disproportion of effects 
to causes, and it is essential, therefore, if children 
are to be well-born, that their parents should be 
careful that at the moment of procreation they are 
atted for the performance of so serious an act. Mr. 
j. F. Nisbet in his "Marriage and Heredity" (page 
!•>,,,. u-,.11 observes, ••Twin, usually bear a closer 
emblance to each other than to their brothers 



91 



and sisters born at a different period; and the rea- 
son generally assigned is that they are conceived 
under precisely similar conditions. If so, it follows 
that the difference existing between ordinary mem- 
bers of a family is due to their being born at con- 
siderable intervals of time and therefore under 
changed conditions on the part of their parents." 

Sobriety in the Father. — Especially does it con- 
cern the father, who is the most active agent in 
reproduction, to see that he is then in a fit condi- 
tion. This is quite apart from the question of the 
diseased condition of the organism treated of by 
Dr. Von Krafft-Ebings, and refers to temporary 
rather than to continuing causes. Sobriety is in 
this connection of great importance, and, as ap- 
pears from a passage, already quoted, in Xeno- 
phon, was insisted on at the time of procreation, 
by the ancients. 

Zeigler points out, as quoted by Dr. Eimer, thai 
''substances taken up from without, as. for exam- 
ple, poisons, are brought by the blood to the sexual 
cells, and others produced in the body are conveyed 
to the sexual organs."* It is suggested that alco- 
hol has such an effect, and there can be no doubt 
that a tendency to the drinking habit may be im- 
planted in a child by a parent intoxicated at the 



Organic Evolution," page 187. 



92 

time of procreation, with the possibility of its lead- 
ing to other evils in succeeding generations, ending 
in the early extinction of the family. Nisbet refers 
to several cases of this character, and remarks 
(page L12) that, "There is a limit to the trans- 
mission of abnormal characters, either in an origi- 
nal or in a disguised form. Always striving after 
perfection, or rather uniformity of type, Nature 
either purifies a race of its physical and moral de- 
fects, or, if the type be too vicious, exterminat( - It, 
as in the ease of the Caesars, the Stuarts, and many 
other historical families." Doutrebente cam.' to 
the conclusion, however, that insanity— and doubt- 
less it is true of other conditions— may be worked 
out of a family by the infusion of healthy blood, 
except, where both parents were insane, in which 
case their offspring will become extinct. 

The law of Leviticus (chap. x. verse 9) provides, 
under penalty of death, thai the priests should Dot 
drink wine or strong drink before going into the 
t,. nt of meeting. The more stringenl regulations 
provided by this law in relation to intercourse be- 
tween Jehovah and His people require physical and 
moral perfection in those who approach the deity, 
and they may be studied with advantage at the 
present day by those who wish to aid in the per- 
fecting of the race. The man who had a blemish 
was Dot allowed to go near the altar of sacrifice, 
that the sanctuary might not be profaned; and the 



93 



sanctuary of the human organism should no less 
be preserved from profanation. 

Sacredness of Parentage. — It would be well if 
the sacred act of procreation were performed more 
often in the spirit of the ancients, who regarded 
marriage as a sacred institution, designed not only 
for the perpetuation of the race, but also for the 
carrying on of the religion of the domestic hearth. 
The first-born child especially was considered to 
have been sent by the gods, and care was taken, 
therefore, that it should be well-born. Prayer and 
offerings were made to the spirits before the nup- 
tial bed was approached, and everything was done 
to ensure the gift they were asked for should be 
in every respect worthy of them. Among the an- 
cient Hebrews the first-born of "all that openeth 
the womb" was dedicated to Jehovah (Exodus 
xxxiv, 10), and hence the rights of the eldest son 
could not be defeated by his father: " for he is the 
beginning of his strength " (Deut. xxi, 17). 

The disturbance of uterine existence between 
conception and birth is that which has engaged 
most attention, and the fact that such disturbances 
can take place requires that the expectant mother 
should be protected from anything that can so act 
on her own organism as to prevent the due opera- 
tion of the law of heredity. The precautions taken 
by primitive peoples in relation to food may have 



<»4 



some foundation in fact, and any food Bhould be 
avoided by the enceinte woman which will injuri- 
ously influence the system, or give rise to organic 
disturbances that may affect the blood by which 
the embryo is nourished. Emotional disturbani 
are to be no less avoided, as through the nervous 
system they act on the blood itself. How far the 
action of the emotions can influence the physical 
organism lias become a moot question with psy- 
chologists, who now seem inclined to think that 
"movements are not caused by the emotions, hut 
are aroused reflexly by the object.*' Thus, if the 
sight of a disagreeable object affects by reflex ac- 
tion the muscular system of the mother, it will 
arouse in \\rv a concomitant emotion, which being 
transmitted to the embryo ma> act on it ^ muscular 
system, leaving the impression as a birthmark, 
which may be regarded as a reflection from the 
cerebral nerve center of the mother, whetheremo- 
tion is the cause or effed of muscular movement 

If the unborn child can be affected injuriously 
by disturbances of the mother's environment, it is 
reasonable to suppose that the child ean be influ- 
enced in the opposite direction by making that en- 
vironment as conducive to the normal activity ..t 

the materia] organism a- possible. The story of 
Jacob and Laban, referred to at the beginning 
of this chapter, affords an imp.. nam Lesson as to 
Me- surroundings with which the wife should be 



95 



provided. The bedchamber itself may become a 
means of influencing offspring for good or evil, 
and hence it should contain only what is agreeable 
to the senses, and capable of giving rise to pleasant 
imaginings. Especially should this be the case 
where a woman is of a highly sensitive nature. 
Impressions received from without depend largely 
for their force and influence, however, on the con- 
dition of the receptive mind, and beautiful surround- 
ings cannot make up for the want of inward har- 
mony. A happy and contented mind is the best 
guarantee that the due action of the law of heredity 
will not be disturbed at the time of conception or 
afterwards. Thus, bickerings between husband 
and wife must have a disturbing effect, especially 
if carried into the bedchamber. The sage of old 
said: "Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath," 
and parents should make it a point of duty, for the 
sake of their future offspring, never to let the dis- 
putes of the daytime — if unfortunately they occur — 
be carried into the night. The bedchamber is the 
place for mental as well as physical repose. 

The surest guarantee against the occurrence of 
conditions which may injuriously affect the future 
offspring, either at the time of procreation, or dur- 
ing the subsequent period of gestation, is to be 
found in the general life of the parents. This will 
give the general impress which affects the dispo- 
sition of the child as a whole, and it will show 



96 



through the conditions of the family life under 
the influence of which il vrasborn. Thenatuwd 
„„. ..,„„,„.'• is thus an importanl factor in deter- 
ging that of the offspring, and it will necessarily 
be a reflection of the general character of those on 

whom- it depends. A nohle life in the parent wd 
bearfruil in the physical, intellectual and moral 
character of the child and although Uu. . h« 
in relation to the father as well as to the mother 

it is douhly true as to the latter, seeing tha the 
mother alone is the hearer and nourisher of off- 
spring during the period of gestation. Dunngth^ 
period the child acquires prohahly many ol the 
factors W hich H inherits from its mother, and 
the maternal influence may thus be extended to 
the period of Lactation. The importance attached 
to fosterage, where this practice became an estob- 

iished custom, as with the early Irish and Arabs 

would S eem to prove that the characteristics o the 
aurse were to some extent transmitted to the chdd 

with the milk. The early Arabs regarded the milt 
tie M constituting a real unity of flesh and blood 

between the foster mother and the foster Add. 
imil ,„,„,.,,, foster children, so much so as to be a 

bar bo marriage. 

Sl ,,-,,.vn;,M..~()n, very serious matter which 
should be kept in mind by an expectant mother* 
the du t y of exercising self-control The umuence 



97 



of this principle to relation to the general life and 
conduct has been repeatedly pointed out, and it is 
referred to by Jennie Chandler in The Journal 
of Hygiene for August, 1895, where we are told: 
"The power of self-mastery is believed by scientists 
to be the last one acquired by the human race in 
the process of evolution, and the last powers re- 
quired, are not so firmly fixed in our natures as 
some which have been longer in our possession. 
The result is, it becomes deranged more readily 
than more fixed forces. In many cases, self-con- 
trol has never been acquired at all, and so the per- 
son can only partly master himself. As a rule, 
children have little of this power. They are like 
animals. Little by little, as they grow older, it 
grows, and in some it becomes so well developed 
that it is almost perfect. In others, like music h) 
those who never acquire it, or any other faculty, 
it never becomes a potent factor in life." 

Dr. Chandler adds, '"Woman as well as man 
needs to learn self-mastery. With a large amount 
of feeling in her nature, it is only hard for her to 
do it, but she should try. Too many of us go 
through life never making any effort to be our own 
masters. We give way to caprices, whims, feel- 
ings, follies, far more than is good for our health. 
Hysteria gives us a good example of the loss of 
self-control. Any uncontrolled passion gives an 
equally good example. Men and women often say 



98 

they can't govern themselves; that is admitting 
they have defects of character which are their mas- 
ters. They ought to make effort and see if they 

are not mistaken. The worst effect of lack of -elf- 
control are on the health. It allows every kind of 
bad habit in eating, drinking, dressing, sleepii 
to gain possession of the person, and the result i- a 
weak instead of a strong character." 

Considering the effect which the organic dispo- 
sition of the mother has on the future offspring, 
it is evident that whether a child shall have the 
power of self-control depends very Largely on the 
mother herself, and it is all-important, therefore, 
that she should have and exercise that power her- 
self. As Dr. Chandler remarks. "No matter how 
much you have been to school how many college 
degrees you have, you are not educated till you 
have a reasonable control of your own nature, and 
can direct your own lives rather than have them 
directed for you by your feelings and emotions." 
This truth obtains fresh significance when we con- 
sider that a woman's conduct affects the direction 
qo1 on iy () f her own life, but the lives of her future 
children, an. I possibly of succeeding generations. 

Although much has yet to be done to prove the 
actual eff< cts ■ i offspring of the conduct of its 
p aren t s known to establish the fact that 

both the general dispositiou and the particular eon- 
dU) theror mother may interfere with the or- 



99 



derly action of the law of heredity. This law en- 
sures the inheritance of race and individual charac- 
ters ; but when these are good, a noble life will 
cause the tendencies towards good to be still fur- 
ther strengthened in offspring, and if they are evil, 
then the disposition will receive an inclination in 
the opposite direction, or, at least, the further de- 
velopment of evil will be arrested. On the other 
hand, a degrading life will produce bad effects on 
offspring, causing deterioration of the organic dis- 
position and strengthening the tendency to evil it 
may have inherited, or weakening its tendencies 
towards the good. 



HEREDITY AND EDUCATION 



Lecture delivered before the Brooklyn Ethical Aesociation. 



In presenting the subject of heredity and its re- 
lation to education, it seems to me besl bo consider 
first what is meant by the term, and after this the 
views held on the subjecl by our Leading evolution- 
ists, when its relation fco education will be easier 
and, I hope, mere satisfactory. 

hi common parlance, heredity is the transmission 
of any trait or peculiarity from the parenl bo the 
offspring, as the color of the hair, the form of the 
Q0S e, the tones of the voice; or any disease, or 
any special character that may exist in either pa- 
rent. 

If a horse has a star on its forehead like one of 
its ancestors, we say it is due to heredity. It" an ox 
has color marks en its body Like its parent, it is a 
case of heredity. If a human being has a disease 
which his ancestors had. very of ten lie declares he 
inherited it from them, even if it he only a common 
catarrh. Bu1 this is a narrow view of the subject, 
and does not include all that a biologist means 

when lie USeS this word. 



101 



By heredity he understands the production from 
a fertilized ovum of an individual, with all the gen- 
eral characteristics of structure and function of 
body and brain of the species to which it belongs. 
It means that the offspring, however much they 
may vary in general characters, will always be of 
the same species as the parents. The offspring of 
dogs will be dogs ; of wolves, wolves ; of negroes, 
negroes, and of white men, white men. Anything 
less is not heredity in its full sense. 

Darwin, whom we all love and honor, says : " The 
whole subject of inheritance is wonderful," and in 
this he but voices the universal sentiment of those 
who have given any serious consideration to it. 
Let me try to show you how wonderful it is by an 
illustration. From very ancient times the horse 
has been the constant companion of man. This 
animal, with his splendid muscular system, the 
most perfect, perhaps, of any creature, has for his 
food and shelter, and not always the best of these, 
rendered mankind almost infinite service. Now, 
every horse that has ever been born into the world 
began life as a minute ovum, which under the 
microscope presents no appearance of a horse, or 
any other animal, and, strange to say, this ovum 
is, to all appearance, like the ovum of other ani- 
mals, and no amount of study, without knowing its 
origin, can decide whether it will develop as a dog, 
an ox, a horse or a man. After, however, it has 



L02 

gone through bhe process of gestation, this appar- 
ently simple egg becomes an animal of a \ • v\ com- 
plex nature with heart, lungs, brain, eyes, ears, 
mouth, stomach, and blood vessels, all where they 

should he and ready to perform their functions; 
with mental traits of a peculiar kind which adapt 
him to the service which man requires. Nav more: 
In the process of the evolution of tin* horse. Little by 
little he has changed in various ways, and many, if 
not all of tlie^e changes in his bodily constitution 
and in his mental characteristics, which have been 
found useful or made him more serviceable to man. 
his greater docility, his increased size, his enor- 
mous strength and speed, his wonderful beauty. 
through a wise selection and the weeding out of the 
until on the part of the breeder, have been trans- 
mitted through heredity to his offspring, so that to- 
day only a paleontologist can tell us if he find-, the 
remains <»f a primitive horse, that it belongs to the 
same cla>s of animals as the horse of our time. 

Theories. — Our theories of heredity will depend 
on tlie extent of our knowledge, and especially our 
knowledge of embryology. In the last century 
knowledge on this subject was very meagre, 
peciall} that part of embryology which could only 
be studied with the microscope; consequently the 

views <>f scientists and others of that tune were 

exceedingly crude. The most important was that 



103 

of Malphigi and Bonnet, who maintained that the 
miniature animal existed in the egg. that fertiliza- 
tion by the male element simply furnished it with 
food for growth, and that this was added to and 
stored up in its interstices. Cuvier, Haller and 
Leibnitz adopted substantially these views. The 
latter found them to support his opinion that every- 
thing was the result of growth from monads, and 
that there was no such thing in all nature as gener- 
ation. 

Such a theory was very simple, but it explained 
nothing except the bare production of offspring. It 
gave no clue to their endless variations, nor to the 
fact that they often resembled the father more than 
the mother. According to this theory the offspring 
should resemble the mother, as the complete indi- 
vidual is formed by her and should be in her image. 

Leeuwenhock, one of the early microscopists, by 
the aid of his lenses, opened a new world to man- 
kind, and discovered the sperm cells to be active, 
living, moving elements, and he gave a death-blow 
to the belief that the perfect organism exists in the 
ovum; but he went to the opposite extreme, and 
maintained that it exists in the male cell and that 
it is only fed and developed by the female. Even 
today we find in a vague way both these theories 
held by educated persons. 

We are indebted to Harvey in the early part of 
the eighteenth century for advocating the view held 



104 

by Aristotle, now known as Epigenesis, and com- 
batting the view of growth from a miniature, but 
already perfectly formed animal, to a visible one. 
Epigenesis consists in the successive differentiation 
from the relatively homogeneous elements as found 
in the egg, to the complicated parts and structure 
as seen in the offspring. 

According to Euxley, this work of Barvej alone 
would have entitled him to recognition as one of 
the founders of biological science, had he n«»t im- 
mortalized himself as the discoverer of the circula- 
tion of the blood. 

Not long after Barvey's publication, Casper Fred- 
erick Wolf established the theory of epigenesis 
upon a firm foundation, where it still remains. 

The doctrine of epigenesis has very much com- 
plicated the whole question of heredity. No won- 
der even so great a mind as thai of Darwin ex- 
claimed, "The Whole subject is wonderful.*' How 

can an egg, which in structure is comparatively 
simple, an aggregation of cells, Dot cue of which 
bears the slightest resemblance to any organ in the 
body, develop into the perfeel individual 'i How can 
this egg, formed in special organs, devolop other 

nis than those like the ones in which it was 

formed? Mow can sexual cells develop brain cells. 
with their wonderful modes of action ? 

We cannot explain the philosophy of heredity 

with<»nt being aide to answer these questions; bul 



105 

difficult as is the problem, our biologists have made 
various attempts at an explanation. I cannot go 
over all the various speculations, but only those 
most intimately connected with the subject will be 
mentioned. 

The first is Darwin's own attempt at an explana- 
tion by the theory of pangenesis, or genesis from 
every part. He saw the necessity of having in the 
sexual cells some power or force to represent 
the other organs and functions of the body, else 
how could these organs be formed in the embryo ? 
Pangenesis was supposed to be accomplished as 
follows : Every organ through its cells gives off 
gemmules. These are inconceivably small, too small 
for any microscopical vision; also 'nconceivably 
great in numbers, and with great power of growth 
and multiplication. They pass from the various or- 
gans in which they are formed to the special sex 
organs for generating the sexual cells ; some of 
them are stored up as representatives of the vari- 
ous organs from which they have been given off. 
The consequence is that every egg has in it some- 
thing from every organ in the body of both parents 
which is able, during gestation, to develop into that 
organ. 

According to this theory, for instance, if no gem- 
mules are given off from the brain, then no brain can 
be developed from the egg, and so of other organs. 
As in a representative government, all parts of the 



L06 

country send representatives to the capital to do 
the bidding of the people, so every organ of the 
body scuds representatives to the sexual cells to 
form their respective organs; without them these 
organs would no1 be formed. 

There are many objections to pangenesis, but 
they need not be named here. It occurred to Gal- 
ton, whose studies iii heredity have beeu more pro- 
lific of good than those of any other man. to tesl it 
by practical experiment. If these gemmules are cir- 
culating in the blood of animal- before being stored 
up in the sexual cells, by transfusing blood from 
one variety of any species to another it ought to 
affect the offspring of this other. For his test cases 
he chose eighteen silvergrey rabbits which breed 
true, and into their bodies he transfused the blood 
of other different varieties, in several cases re- 
placing one-half of this fluid. There were eighty- 
six offspring bred at once from these silvergrey 
rabbits, and all true silver-revs. The theory did 
not work. But if it did not work in practice, it cer- 
tainly worked on the intellects of biologists every- 
where, exactly what Darwin wished ; it set them 
to thinking. It acted as a ferment, so to say. and 
brought forth a rich harvest in speculation if not in 
actual knowledj 



. Darwindid no1 regard thia experiment as aettling this qu 

II,. had great affection, so to speak, foi thia | r, des] 

ftIlll ,,, ueved it would anally be established as in the mam true. 



107 

Continuity of the Germ-plasm. — The only other 
theory which I shall mention is that of Weismann, 
which has been before the public for more than a 
decade, and it is safe to say it has produced a more 
profound impression upon biologists than all others. 
It has its basis in what he calls continuity of the 
germ-plasm. By the germ-plasm is meant that part 
of the germ cell containing all the chemical and 
physical properties, including the molecular struc- 
ture, which enables it to become, under appropriate 
conditions, a new individual of the same species as 
the parents. In it lies hidden all the characteristics 
both of the species and of the future individual. 
In it lies all the phenomena of heredity. It is the 
product of the coalescence of the male and female 
elements requisite for reproduction. Only, how- 
ever, in the nuclear substance is to be found the 
hereditary tendencies. Now, this germ-plasm is 
continuous, that is to say, it contains not only ma- 
terial from both parents, but from grandparents 
and greatgrandparents, and so on indefinitely. This 
germ-plasm is exceedingly minute in quantity, but 
has great power of growth. Not all is used up in 
the production of any individual, but some is left 
over and stored up for the next generation. The 
germ-plasm might be represented as a long creep- 
ing root, from which arise at intervals all the in* 
dividuals of successive generations. The amount 
of ancestral germ-plasm in each fertilized ovum is 



108 

calculated in the same way that stock breeders cal- 
culate the amount of blood of any ancestor running 

in any individual. For instance: The germ-plasm 
contributed by the father and mother is each one- 
half ; each grandparent one fourth, and bo on. Ten 
generations back each ancestor contributes only 
one pari in one thousand and twenty-four parts. 
This continuity has by some been called the im- 
mortality of the germ-plasm. Theoretically, the 
original Adam and Eve have contributed an in- 
finitesimal part. This probably explains why tic- 
is so much of the original Adam in most of us. 
By it we arc able to explain that wonderful fact of 
atavism, or the appearance of characters from a 
remote ancestor in offspring. Some of the germ- 
plasm from this ancestor by some means has had 
an opportunity to -row rapidly and contribute more 
than its share in the production of the individual in 

which it appears. 

It also enables us to explain the fact that DO two 

individuals are quite alike, but that there is con- 
stant variation. Each person is the product oi a 
multitude of ancestors, and the germ-plasm which 

oduce d them is never mixed, in quite the same 
proportion, nor do the different par,, grow with 
quite the same vigor. 

It was on this theory of the continuity oi the 
..., rm .plasmthat Weismann built his doctrine of the 
uon-transmission of acquired characters. On this 



109 

subject he says: "Hence it follows that the trans- 
mission of acquired characters is an impossibility, 
for if the germ-plasm is not formed anew in each 
individual, but is derived from that which preceded 
it, its structure, and above all, its molecular con- 
stitution, cannot depend upon the individual in 
which it happens to occur, but such an individual 
only forms, as it were, the nutritive soil at the ex- 
pense of which it grows, while the latter possessed 
its character from the beginning that is, before 
the commencement of growth." Of this, however, 
I will speak later. 

A Rational View of Heredity. — I might con- 
tinue giving other theories of heredity — Heckel's, 
for instance — or the metaphysical theory, but it is 
hardly necessary. I do not accept in full any of 
them. Their authors, it seems to me, have not 
worked along the lines of evolution, but have gone 
further than was necessary into the fields of spec il- 
lation. Darwin, in his theory of Pangenesis, ad- 
mitted this frankly, and vet he clung to the idea 
with great tenacity. If we take the unicellular 
organisms which multiply by division, we may see 
that heredity is simple. One unicellular individual 
growing larger than is convenient, divides into two. 
Each is like the other. It could hardly be different. 
Reproduction by spores or buds is practically the 
same thing. The spores or buds are minute parti- 



110 



cles of the parenl organism. When it comes to the 
coalescence of the germ and sperm elements from 
two organisms, the phenomena become more com- 
plicated, and it is still more so as the animal ri 

in the scale of creation ; but I believe the pro* 
of organic evolution have gone on so slowly that 
the sexual cells have acquired the power to trans- 
mit the whole organism without the necessity of 
the germ-plasm being continued from parent to I 
offspring indefinitely, and also without the aid of I 
pangenesis. 

The egg has acquired a tendency to develop in a 
certain direction. Just how we cannot tell, further 
than to say that it was probably the result of vari- 
ation first and natural selection selecting out those 
variations most suitable. It is this tendency to 
vary that gives rise to main of the phenomena of l 
heredity. The subject is, for the present, beyond 
our power to settle satisfactorily, and so hypotheses 
must be resorted to. The sexual colls, compara- 
tively simple in anatomical structure, hum he I 
highly complex in their molecular structure; and 
the more highly evolved the organism, the more 
complex becomes this molecular structure. If it 
were possible to study this molecular structure we 
should be able to understand the whole subject far 
better than is possible now. But this is not possible, 
«>i"l there is little hope that w t > shall ever he able 
t<> accomplish it. 



i 






Ill 

Heredity and the Education of Children. — 
The next question which comes up for consideration 
is that of the education of children and its relation to 
heredity. This brings us at once to the problem as 
to whether acquired characters are transmitted to 
offspring or not. If acquired characters are trans- 
mitted, the relation of heredity to education must 
be very close and important. If acquired charac- 
ters are not inherited, then heredity and education 
have a very different relation. That acquired char- 
acters are transmitted has long been believed. It 
was the belief of Lamarck. He tried to explain the 
structure of the organism by this principle. The 
illustration of the long neck of the giraffe is fa- 
miliar to every one. It originated by the constant 
stretching of this part to obtain food from the trees. 
In times of scarcity, he had to exert himself in this 
way still more to reach the higher branches. The 
young of the giraffe had longer necks than their 
parents because of the efforts of the latter in this 
way. So the keen sight of birds, it was argued, 
was acquired in the same manner. The hawk had 
to exercise his eyes most vigorously to discern his 
prey at a distance, and his offspring inherited this 
keenness of sight acquired by the exercise of his 
ancestors. 

Darwin believed that the effects of the exercise 
of any part were transmitted. He says: "We 
may feel assured that the inherited effects of the 



L12 

use and disuse of parts will have done much in the 
same direction with natural selection in modifying 
man's structure of body." 

We may say that this belief has been beld by the 
common people, uneducated in science. They noi 
unfrequently gel at truths in a rude way long be- 
fore the scientists do. Many parents tell us their 
children are strongly influenced by sonic particular 
occupation of the mother during pregnancy. So 
strong is this belief, that many mothers are in our 
times trying to influence the character of their un- 
born children by special modes of life, by cultivat- 
ing music or art, or science, in order to give the 
child a love for these pursuits. 

It is 1)\ Eerbert Spencer that this lias been mosl 
ably presented. Indeed, he holds that there is no 
explanation of evolution without the transmision of 
the effects of the use and disuse of parts. His 
words are: "If there has been no transmission of 
acquired character there has been no evolution." 

He also says : "If we go back to the genesis of 
the human type from some lower type of primates, 
we see that while the little toe has ceased to be of 
any use for climbing purposes, it has not come into 
any considerable use for walking or running. It is 
manifest that the greal toes have been immensely 
developed since there took place the change from 
arboreal to terrestrial babits. A study <>\' the 
mechanism of walking shows why this has hap- 



113 

pened. Stability requires that the line of direction 
—the vertical line, let fall from the center of gravi- 
ty—shall fall within the base, and the walking shall 
be brought at each step within the area of support, 
or so near that any tendency to fall may be checked 
at the next step. A necessary result is that if at 
each step the chief stress of support is thrown on 
the outer side of the foot, the body must be swayed 
so that the line of direction may fall within the 
outside of the foot, or close to it; and when the 
next step is taken it must be similarly swayed in 
an opposite direction, so that the outer side of the 
foot may bear the weight. That is to say, the body 
must oscillate from side to side, or waddle. The 
movement of the duck when walking shows what 
happens when the points of support are far apart. 
This kind of movement conflicts with efficient loco- 
motion. There is a waste of muscular energy in 
making these lateral movements, and they are at 
variance with the forward movement. We may 
infer, then, that the developing man profited by 
throwing the stress as much as possible on the 
inner side of the feet, and was especially led to do 
this when going fast, which enabled him to abridge 
the oscillations, as indeed we see it now in the 
drunken man. Then there was thrown a continu- 
ally increasing stress upon the inner digits as they 
progressively developed from the efforts of use, 
until now the inner digits, so large compared with 



Ill 

the outer, bear the greater part of the weight, and 
being relatively near one another render needless 
any swaying of the body from side to side in walk- 
ing. But what lias meanwhile happened to tie- 
outer digits? Evidently as fasl as the great t 
have come more and more into play and the small 
ones have gone more and more out of play, dwin- 
dling for — how long shall we say? — perhaps lou,000 
years." in oilier and simpler words, the great toe 
of man has wonderfully developed since he began 
to walk upright. This has been from greater use, 
and the transmission of the effects of this use to 
offspring. The small toe has decreased in size pro- 
portionately. This we can reasonably infer has 
been the result of disuse, the effects of which were 
also transmitted to offspring. 

A still more remarkable illustration of the effects 

of Use and disuse is seen in the sense of touch in 
different parts of the body. Prof. Weber, in his 
Laboratory for experimental psychology, has worked 
out this difference most minutely. Be finds thai 
by takings pair of compasses, the points iy( which 
are less than one-twelfth of an inch apart, the end 
of the forefinger is not able to distinguish more 
than one point. Going to the middle of the back 
we have the Least discriminating power in the skin. 

b.r the points must be separated tWO and one half 

inches before the nerves can decide that there are 
two. Any oim may test this on himself. Between 



115 

these extremes we have many differences. The 
end of the nose has four times as great power of 
discrimination as the forehead. When we come to 
the tip of the tongue, we find it far excels any 
part of the body in its power of tactual discrimi- 
nation, it being twice that of the forefinger. In 
every case we find there is greatest delicacy of 
touch in those parts where this sense has been 
most exercised. The tongue is being constantly 
exercised on our food, on the roof of the mouth, 
the teeth, etc. It is rarely idle. There is in man 
no advantage for his survival, Mr. Spencer asserts, 
by having such a sensitive tongue. He could get 
on just as well without it. He regards it as a 
case where the exercise of a function has exalted 
it remarkably, and this exaltation has been trans- 
mitted to offspring. Natural selection, he thinks. 
is not sufficient to account for it. Natural selec- 
tion only preserves those characters which will 
give their possessor some advantage in the struggle 
for existence. 

Still another argument is drawn from the whale. 
This monster once lived, it is believed, partly on 
land, probably on low land near water, and must 
have been smaller than now. It had hind legs ; 
but since it has lived continuously in the water 
its tail has so developed as to make a far better 
organ of locomotion, and the legs have dwindled 
from disuse, so that now there is only a remnant 



116 

left, and this is hidden beneath the skin. The tail 
has become more efficient from use, and this has 
been transmitted so that all whales are born with 
well developed tails. The legs have dwindled for 
want of use until they have almost disappeared; 
and this effect of disuse 1ms also been transmitted 
to offspring. 

Another illustration is furnished by Havelock 
Charles, an English surgeon, who has -pent much 
time among the Punjab tribes in India, and studied 
them anthropologically. His account is given in 
"The Journal of Anatomy." in a paper on the 

Structure of* the skeletons of these people. It ap- 
peal's they have facets on the hones, fitting them 
for the sitting posture. These do not develop after 
birth, but are seen in the fetus. It seems hardly 
possible that these facets could have any other 
origin except by transmission after being acquired 
by ages of use of sitting posture. 

Another argument is drawn from the coadapta- 
tion <»f parts. We know that the male sheep, like- 
wise the goat, the stag, and the males of many 
other animals, have large horns. They are Bup- 
posed i'- be useful in fighting with rivals in order 
secure as large a number of females as possi- 
ble. Now these large horns require at the same 
time ;i greater development of the bones of the 
head t«» hold them, also larger and stronger verte- 
brae of the neck and back, and larger mu8cl< - pf 



117 

these parts to maintain and use them effectively. 
In other words, there must be coadaptation of all 
the parts, otherwise these larger horns would be 
an incumbrance and useless. Now, if we accept 
the theory of the inheritance of acquired charac- 
ters, this is all simple. The use of the head in 
butting against other males exercises all these 
parts simultaneously, and they develop equally and 
at the same time. If, however, inheritance has 
no part in the matter, then we must fall back on 
variation in the germ-plasm and natural selection 
for an explanation ; but it is difficult or, as Spencer 
says, impossible to conceive of variation produc- 
ing large and heavy horns on these animals and at 
the same time coadaptation of all the other parts 
to hold and use them. Sometimes coadaptation 
does not take place, as in the common brook crab, 
familiar to every country boy. Its foreclaws or 
fingers are out of all proportion to the rest of the 
leg, and its awkwardness is well known. The lob- 
ster is another case. Even in human beings we 
have instances of non-coadaptation, as where the 
head and brain are out of proportion to the size 
of the body, or the reverse. I need not multiply 
instances. 

Now, if acquired characters are transmitted, any 
system of training which exists for a considerable 
time must necessarily appear in the structure of 
the body and in the character. If the training is 



L18 

imt In accord with the laws of evolution, it can 
fche race to deviate from the true line of progr< 
and by just bo much hinder advancement. It", on 
the otin-r hand, our systems of education conform 
to correct principles, progress is advanced by them. 
Quite recently an entirely new theory lias grown 
up, opposed to Lamarckianism, and the theory of 
the transmission of acquired characters. It has 
been before the world little more than a decade 
and has made remarkable progress, though it is 
too soon to say it has been established beyond dis- 
pute. Prof. Weismann, its author, is well equipped 
as a biologist to maintain and defend it. I have 
already stated briefly his theory of heredity, name- 
ly, that the germ-plasm is continuous from parent 
to offspring. This necessitates a remodeling <»f 
commonly accepted views, an entire giving up of 
the Lamarckian belief that use and disuse have 
their effect on progeny. If the germ-plasm con- 
tinues from one generation to another, then it must 
already have boon formed, or at least provided for, 
even before the birth of the parents. They may 
modify it. through growth and nutrition, but not 
through exercise of any function. Prof. Weis- 
mann went at the demonstration <»f his views in 
a thoroughly scientific way by the making of ex- 
periments On living animals and tin 1 collection of 
facts. From his experiments it is now pretty well 
established that wounds and injuries, which he 



119 

considers to be acquired characters, are not trans- 
mitted. No matter for how many generations you 
cut off the tails of dogs, cats, horses or sheep, the 
effects of this removal do not appear in the progeny. 
Most parents have some mark on the body, received 
in early life, some cut or bruise, some scratch, but 
their children do not inherit them. The famous ex- 
periment of cutting off the tails of mice, for gener- 
ation after generation, and then breeding from them 
was one of Weismann's methods of substantiating 
the theory that acquired character is not inherited. 
The offspring of these mutilated mice had as long 
tails as if those of their parents had not been re- 
moved. The explanation is, the germ-plasm was 
not in any way affected by the bodily mutilation. 
The practice of the Flathead Indian is another 
case. The children of parents whose heads have 
been artificially flattened are not affected by it. 
The small feet of Chinese women, made so by 
binding them and preventing their growth, may 
also be mentioned. 

Intellectual Acquirements. — Not to depend on 
such evidence, however, he adduces that of a very 
different character, namely, the non-transmission 
of intellectual acquirements. Language is an ex- 
ample. Although human beings have been com- 
municating their thoughts to each other from very 
ancient times by speech, yet every child has to 



learn how bo do this for itself. No matter how 
many languages the parents master, their children 
have to go over all the -round the parents did, 
make all the toil and effort t<> Learn to speak. Th< 
children of the most gifted linguists, if brought up 
without coming in contact with those who can 
teach them to talk, will never learn a single 
word. There arc, it is claimed, a few cases on 
record of children who never acquired their natural 
tongue because they had lived among animals and 
not anions human beings. They learned to make 
the same vocal sounds the animals did. no more. 
The environment in this case was everything, the 
parental acquirements nothing. 

Music, like language, is also an acquired char- 
acter, and it is probably not transmitted. Our 
musical geniuses are not the children of greal mu- 
sicians, but in most cases the reverse. They seem 
to spring into existence from lowly source-, or ;it 
Least from parents whose advantages for a musical 
education have been very limited, though gener- 
ally they have had good health, and a climatic 
environment of a favorable kind. Great musical 
tahnt usually dies out in any family in a few gen- 
erations, no matter how much it is cultivated, or. 
if it does not die out entirely, it becomes mediocre : 
and yet the opportunities of the children of great 
musicians, and the ambition of their parents for it- 
culture, are usually very favorable. 



121 

Instinct. — In accepting the theory of the non- 
transmission of acquired characters, it becomes 
necessary to give up prevailing views of the origin 
of instinct. According to the old belief it was a 
gift of God, and not acquired by any effort on the 
part of its possessor. In speaking of the instinct 
of bees, Sidney Smith says : "Providence has done 
it. There are the bees, there is the comb, and the 
honey, get rid of it or find some other explanation 
if you can." 

The early evolutionists changed all this, and 
made instinct the inheritance of an oft-repeated 
act. The young kitten, as soon as old enough, 
hunts for a mouse and catches it without any train- 
ing. The sight of the mouse acts on its nervous 
system in such a way as to compel it to creep up 
softly, jump on it, toy and play with it, and finally 
kill and eat it. It would have required long prac- 
tice on the part of its ancestors before so wonderful 
a character could have become fixed. The same is 
true of the setter dog. 

The new view is, that instincts arise from vari- 
ations in the germ-plasm. The union of the germ 
elements of two individuals causes it to vary more 
or less from either parent. These variations will 
be favorable and unfavorable. The unfavorable 
ones will produce offspring handicapped in the 
struggle for life and they will disappear. The fa- 
vorable variations will produce descendants possess- 



L22 

ing advantages for Burvival and leave numerous 
offspring. 

Ii is not easy to accept, this view, but I think 
there are some tacts that support it. I will ad- 
vance a few. The hive of the honey-bee contains 

three kinds of insects: the queen, the drones or 

males, and the workers. The queen makes her 

nuptial flight but once in a life-time, and does it 
from instinct. How can an instinct like this have 
been acquired by being performed but once? The 
diones are derived from unfertilized eggs; \<t 
their instincts are those of the male, not of the fe- 
male. As they have no male ancestors, it seems 
probable there was in tic germ-plasm <»f some 
queen bee, al a time far hack, some change which 
allowed unfertilized eggs to produce mal< 

The workers are all females, not full} developed 
sexually on account of a diel with too small a pro- 
portion of nitrogenous food and containing so la 
n proportion of the hydrocarbons. They inherit 
from the mother, or rather from the germ-plasm, 
the instinet to gather hone} . 3 el neither their male 
nor female ancestors ever gathered any honey in 
their lives, nor have they i'^r ages. Far back in 
antiquity the queen, no doubt, did gather honey, 
but the disuse of this instinct has not caused it 

to disappear in the working bee, as it should have 

done according to the Lamarckian theory of disuse 

Causing deca) of function. Is there any way to 



123 

account for this, except on the theory that the 
germ-plasm produces working bees as well as the 
other kinds, irrespective of the habits of the queen? 
Her character in this respect is fixed and does not 
change. Is it unreasonable to think that some time 
in the past, in some queen bee, was formed a germ- 
plasm capable of producing three varieties, and 
that there was such an advantage in it for sur- 
vival, that it has been continued ever since by 
natural selection ? Queens not able to do this have 
not been selected, left no offspring, and thus the 
perfection of the stock has been assured. 

One more case. Some years ago, when inter- 
ested in agricultural entomology, I made a study 
of the so-called seventeen-year locust. Noting the 
wonderful precision with which the female cuts 
into a soft twig of a tree and lays its eggs in two 
rows, the thought was suggested to me, how can 
an instinct, used only a few hours, onre in seven- 
teen years, be acquired by exercise and persist in 
the offspring seventeen years later? Weismann's 
theory of the origin of instinct from favorable vari- 
ations in the germ-plasm offers, it seems to me, a 
rational explanation. 

I do not need to extend illustrations which 
abound in the insect world, especially among the 
ants, which furnish cases of coadaptation that 
cannot be transmitted, as they do not propagate, 
so I will not mention them here. 



124 

Now, if acquired characters are not transmitted 
bo offspring, how should these facts affect our 

i ii« t hods of educating children ? 

One advantage will be evident. L think, to all. 
Erroneous s\ stems of training, which do not injure 
the health, will not appear through heredity in the 
offspring of parents thus wrongly trained, excepl 
as a result of environment. That is to say, the 
injury does not become congenital— will not be in 
the blood— and, consequently, it will be Less diffi- 
cult to eradicate it and to introduce better systems. 
This may be considered an advantage. But it is 
qoI all. It' heredity takes place only through the 
germ-plasm, then it seems to me that whatever 
promotes a knowledge of how to maintain it in a 
high degree of health, and how to favor more per- 
fectly natural selection, are subjects with which 
our educators may busy themselves far more than 
they do. That is to say. the study of biology, of 
life -of the laws of human growth and develop- 
ment, and of evolution, will become, more and 
more, important factors in our school curriculum. 
We can hardly imagine how much our common 
every-day life has been aided by even the slight 
knowledge of mathematics gained by an acquaint- 
ance with addition, subtraction, multiplication and 
division. By it we are able to keep our little ac- 
counts correctly, and neither cheat our creditors 
Qor be cheated by them. Could we not by a know]- 



125 

edge of the laws of evolution, and also the laws 
of growth and development, keep our larger ac- 
count with nature in a far better condition ? Could 
we not keep ourselves from being cheated out of 
our health and happiness, and also do something 
to put an end to physical, intellectual and moral 
deterioration which threatens so many families and 
even races? It seems to me that the time is not 
far distant when these studies will be quite as 
much attended to as the not unimportant ones of 
arithmetic and grammar. 

Knowledge or Heredity. — Whatever doctrine 
of heredity prevails, however, one thing is certain, 
some knowledge of the subject will be very useful 
to those who have in care the training of children. 
To them, often more than to the parent, is en- 
trusted the task of developing the character and 
the individuality of the child. Can he do this well 
if he knows nothing of what the bent of the child's 
genius from ancestral influence is? I doubt very 
much if any of us realize how important it is that 
this individuality should have its proper share of 
attention. As the evolution of society goes on, 
more and more must there be differentiation of our 
various activities. If every boy and every girl 
can be educated so that to a considerable extent 
they can follow the bent of their genius, whenever 
that bent is a normal one, will not the available 



L26 

intellectual and moral energy of society be con- 
siderably augmented ? If you educate a boy which 
nature intended for a blacksmith for a preacher, 
has not the world losl something? Educate another 
for a blacksmith who should have been a preacher, 
is there aol also a great loss? There arc a few 
children who will conic out all right, no matter 
how much they arc schooled, or whether they have 
any schooling, so well have they been born, bul 
with the majority this is not the case. Now it 
ins fco me that the teacher who knows the 
natures of his pupils, and something of their an- 
cestors', can direct their energies more satisfac- 
torily than the one who does not. If there are 
hereditary defects of intellect or morals, he can 
more easily correct them. If there are ancestral 
tendencies to disease through imperfections of cer- 
tain organs, for instance, the Lungs or the brain, 
he can often put the child on such a course <>f 
physical culture or mental training as to lift it 
above danger, so that it may go through life a 
useful person instead of a feeble one or a lunatic. 
Even the tendency t<> crime might be averted. 

[ndividuality, — If we could educate the young 
so as to bring out more fully their normal indi- 
vidualities we should be able to cultivate in them 
more independence of character. On this subj 
Prof, Mills says i "* With all its imperfections, I am 



127 

bound to say that the individuality of the pupils 
in the old log school-house was often more devel- 
oped than in the city public schools of today, 
where for a boy to be himself frequently brings 
with it the ridicule of his fellows — a condition of 
things that has its effect afterward on the lad at 
college. I find that this fear of being considered 
odd, — out of harmony with what others may 
think, — one of the greatest drawbacks to the de- 
velopment of independent investigating students 
at college. The case is still worse for girls. When 
women begin to be really independent in thought. 
in feeling, in action, I shall be more hopeful of the 
progress of mankind. Happily, the dawn of this 
day is already begun.'' 

We must not forget that there is also a spectre 
of heredity. It is seen under different forms. The 
physician is often reminded by his patients that 
they have inherited this or that disease from 
father or mother, or an ancestor farther back. 
Now, there are few diseases which come to us 
directly through inheritance. In a majority of 
cases they are not transmitted. Even consumption 
is not. If we accept the modern theory of its 
origin, as we must, this plague is the result of 
germs floating in the air being introduced into our 
bodies by respiration, or in food, or through con- 
tact with abraided surfaces. Those with weakened 
constitutions are more liable to it than the strong, 



L28 

anda weakened constitution may be inherited, for 
in this case the germ-plasm will no1 be well nour- 
ished and will suffer; bu1 those thus handicapped 
in the race of life will get on far better by endow- 
ing themselves with knowledge and obeying the 
laws of life than they can by Living under the 
sha«l«»w of the great spectre of heredity, and cast- 
ing anathemas at their ancestors for not having 
done more for them. No doubt most of them have 
done the best they could; and if life is worth liv- 
ing, as most of us believe, we owe them many 
thanks for having brought us into the world. 

The Spectre of Heredity.- There Is a spectre 
of heredity of a more serious nature. It is the 
spirit of the dead past, with its mighty band on 
society, on institutions, on modes of life. V\ endell 
Phillips used to tell a story, in his anti-slavery 
addresses, which illustrates the evil effect of this 
inherited spectre. It ran in this wise In an East- 
ern temple, an idol, in the image of a god, Btood 
calmly on it- pedestal. It was sacrilege to touch 
ii with human hands; but rat. having .... such 
feelings of awe in the presence of a deity, began 
to knaw aboul it ... various places, yet no one was 
bold enough to remove it to a place of safety ; and 
bo the rats knawed on and on, and built their nests 
within the sacred image. In time they loosened 
i\ f r om its firm foundation, and one morning, when 



129 

the worshippers came in to pay their devotions, 
they found their god had fallen prostrate on the 
floor. So it is sometimes with our inherited be- 
liefs. They hold us back from progress like a 
heavy weight. We fear to remove them, for they 
are sacred inheritances, idols, gods, and so our 
institutions decay, perish. 

Slowly but surely, as human progress carries the 
race along to a higher level, and as a knowledge of 
the laws of life becomes more universal, shall we 
be able to educate our children so that their effect- 
iveness and happiness will be augmented many 
times. 



EVOLUTIONS HOPEFUL PROMISE FOR A 
HEALTHIER RACE. 



Given before the Qreenaer* Con/erena of BvoltttionUU. 



We have most of us in the pasl looked upon 
health as a matter of inheritance, or temperance 
and moderation in working, in eating and drink- 
ing: or as depending on climate; or exercise, 01 
plenty of sleep, pure water and a morning bath, or 
some other secret, one or more of which is pretty 
sure to be in the possession of most persons who 
have lived long enough to have had some experi- 
ence with those things that do them good or harm. 
All these agencies have greal value ; hut I think 
few of iw realize that nature, through thelawsof 
evolution, has long been working t«> produce a 
brave and strong, healthy and hardy race of men 
and women by other methods than those health 
habits which mosl of us value so highly. 

Nature has been doing this chiefly by two meth- 
ods, and it seems necessary that 1 should say some- 
thing about them in order to present my subject 
a- ! wish to present it. The methods to which I 
refer are those of sexual and natural sele stion. It 
is to these two processes that we are largely in- 



131 

debted for race improvements — more perfect bodies, 
more active brains, and the high degree of health 
which a considerable portion of the race enjoys. 

Sexual Selection. — By sexual selection is meant 
that preference which the male or the female has ; 
for certain characteristics of the other sex. It also 
includes the advantages which the stronger and 
more capable male has over the weaker one in ob- 
taining a choice, or, among polygamous animals, 
a larger number of females, thus allowing offspring 
to be generated by the most capable, and prevent- 
ing the most incapable from procuring mates. 

The first principle of sexual selection, that of 
preference, would imply a considerable develop- 
ment of the intellect, and some taste, but I do not 
think it has had great influence on the lower forms 
of life. It is difficult to study the preferences of 
insects, for instance ; but I have studied the moth 
of the silkworm, and could never observe that 
either male or female had a choice for any par- 
ticular mate. They always appear to take the first 
one that came along. I think this is the conclusion 
come to by those entomologists who have had op- 
portunities for studying other insects. The spider 
might perhaps be studied in this relation to ad- 
vantage, as the female is ferocious, often eating 
her male suitors while they are trying to woo her. 
Nor do I believe that it is a very important matter 



132 



in many other animals. Certainly among the dom< 3- 
tic oneB — the sheep, the horse, the bull and the 
cow a superior male and female will mate with 
inferior ones of the opposite sex, apparently with- 
oul the slightest objection. I have sometimes 
thought 1 had observed in pigeons a preference, 
having occasionally seen a male leave his mate for 
a mere attractive female ; at least one thai seemed 
more attractive to me. 

When it comes to sexual selection through strug- 
gle, no doubt there lias been great advantage, and 
it lias produced important effects. This occurs 
among polygamous and also among non-polj [ 
moiis animals, and the strong males are certain to 
secure the largest number of females and. conse- 
quently, leave the largest number of offspring. 
This would, no doubt, through the laws of inherit- 
ance, be beneficial in producing animals of greater 
vigor and more perfect health. lint even in this 
case, the males seem to have little preference for 
any particular female ; and so while the least vig- 
orous oii.s would have few, and many do off- 
spring, the least vigorous females would leave 
nearly as many as the more vigorous ones, still, 
through pure-blooded males alone, stockbreeders 
tell us, herds of cattle can be brought nj) to a high 
degree of perfection in three or \'^\n- generations, 
if the females, at the beginning of the ex- 
periment, are inferior. The first generation would 



133 

be half pure blood ; the second three-fourths ; the 
third, seven-eighths, and the fourth fifteen-six- 
teenths, or almost thoroughbred. 

When it conies to man, however, the case is dif- 
ferent. With him sexual selection is more import- 
ant, and the preference shown by both sexes is 
very marked. Many women have strong preju- 
dices against marrying men with certain charac- 
teristics, and nothing will induce them to such a 
union. So strong are the desires many of them 
have for mates with particular qualities, that they 
prefer to remain single rather than marry one not 
possessing these qualities. Through this prefer- 
ence, on the whole, the better and those most adapt- 
ed mate with those most suited to them, and a con- 
siderably larger class of physically and mentally 
inferior ones do not mate at all, or, if they do, 
leave few offspring. The idiot would stand no 
chance of securing a mate, although, if left free, 
he would unite with another idiot, like an animal. 
Such things have happened, and the offspring were 
not idiots, as might have been expected ; but they 
were not superior beings. The most deformed in 
body would, in most cases, unless they had mental 
traits of a high order to counterbalance them, 
rarely find mates. Thus, through this agency, 
some of the poorest specimens of both sexes do not 
produce offspring, and this raises the standard of 
the health and ability of the race. 



134 

There are many characters which have conic into 
existence, it is believed, through sexual selection. 
One is beauty in women, greater beauty of form, 
of hair, of eyes, of grace, fidelity, chastity, power 
<>f* love. etc. These all give pleasure to the oppo- 
site sex, and have an element of usefulness in 
them. Whenever these characters have appeared 
in women they have given the possessors a better 
chance to find a partner with superior characters. 
The same is true of men. Woman being debarred 
from the hardest labor through maternity has 
found it useful, even in early times, to ohoose men 
who were strong, brave, courageous and capable 
of defending and caring for her, so far as was p 
sible, and thus by sexual selection she lias indirect- 
ly promoted health and vigor in man. fnr th< 
qualities are inseparable from it. 

But the results of sexual selection are by no 

means perfect. 'The sexes are nearly equally di- 
vided, and as polygamy is not to any great extent 
practiced among human beings, with the exception 
of those already named, most men and women can 
find mates if they wish, even though they may have 
many serious imperfections of body and mind, and 
from them manj children will be born physically 
and mentally incompetent. 

There i^> no doubt that sexual selection is coming 
more and more into play, however. We have 
abundanl evidence of this in the growing senti- 



135 

ment against the marriage of those with a ten- 
dency to any serious disease, as insanity, syphilis, 
etc. Only a little while ago was published an ac- 
count of a suit for a breach of promise brought 
by a young woman in an English court against her 
suitor. He, having in view the value of a healthy 
wife, and also of children well endowed physically, 
asked her before the engagement if any of her near 
relatives had died of consumption, and she replied 
that none had, which he afterwards found was not 
true. On learning of it he refused to marry her. 
I am sorry to say that she won her suit. One of 
the questions asked in court was: "Is it possible 
that a lover would ask such questions of his sweet- 
heart as would be asked of a candidate for life 
insurance?" 

Courtship is such a delightful occupation for the 
young, that it seems a pity to mar it by bringing 
in questions of health. Yet men and women are 
often such deceivers, and frequently so ignorant, 
that some way must be devised to prevent decep- 
tion if sexual selection is ever expected to have its 
full influence on race improvement. 

Human Selection. — Under the head of human 
selection Galton and Wallace have made some in- 
teresting and valuable suggestions for improving 
the health and quality of man. Mr. Galton pro- 
posed a system of marks for family health, intel- 



L36 

led and morals, and those members of families 
having the highest number were to be encouraged 
lo m;,I "'\ v early l»v state endowments sufficient to 
, ' ,1;,1,lr fc hem t«» make a good start in life, early 
marriages being favorable to large families. It 
was a bold suggestion, savoring too strongly of 
socialism or state control of marriage to suil many 
of us. 

Professor Wallace's plan is thai women shall, so 
far as possible, be made independent, so that they 
will not feel the necessity of marrying for a home. 
Nor time might be occupied cither in public duties 
or self-culture, or any occupation she might prefer. 
She should be educated to believe it degrading to 
marry for a home, without love and adaptation, 
and equally wrong to marry her inferior. This 
would compel men to be more manly, to leave off 
their bad habits and many vices, in order to obtain 
wives: and the idle, selfish, sickly and deformed 
would not easily gel them. One difficulty in the 
way of carrying oul this plan is the greater num- 
ber of women in society as it exists today, owing 
to the larger mortality among boys. But by a bet- 
ter hygiene which i- likely to resull from the evo- 
lution of the race, this greater mortality of the 
masculine sex is certain in the future t«» he pre- 
sented, and there will then he an excess of men 
instead of women. Tin-- will he ;) real advantag 
for a scarcity of women would give her a greater 



137 

influence in selection, and the result would be, the 
worst men would not be able to get wives. 

Being in a minority, women would be held in 
higher esteem, be more sought for, and have a real 
choice in marriage by being able to reject unsatis- 
factory suitors, which is certainly not the case now 
to any considerable extent. 

Mr. Wallace's plan would not require such early 
marriages as that of Mr. Galton's, and this would 
be a positive benefit to the physical vigor of the 
children, for we know that the progeny of too early 
marriages are more delicate, and reproduction be- 
fore bodily maturity lowers the standard of health 
in parents as well as of their offspring. Marriage 
being delayed, and the culture of the mind being 
more attended to than is possible when it is early, 
would reduce the number of children in any fami- 
ly, and this would enable parents to bestow more 
care upon them. It would also prevent, to a lim- 
ited extent, over-multiplication of the race, which 
is a real evil, for if every couple left three or four 
children the whole world would soon be full, and 
over-population would result in much disease. 

Mr. Wallace's scheme has in view the prevention 
of marriage by the weak and worthless. He be- 
lieves that if this can be done little more will be 
required, for the superior would be the only ones to 
procreate, and this would be quite sufficient in a 
few generations to produce a strong and healthy 



138 

race. He calls his plan that of "human selec- 
tion." but it may be considered practically as a 
modification of sexual selection. 

Natural Selection. — Natural selection is an- 
other process which takes place on an enormous 
scale and constantly among all organisms, whether 
animal or vegetable. Natural selection is the re- 
sult of the operation of certain laws in the natural 
world which brings about the survival of those best 
fitted for their environment. It is a weeding-out 
system by the destruction of a certain portion, at 
least, if not all, of the weak and the bad, and it 
occurs because there is such a rapid increase of 
most organisms. We speak of it as the survival 
of the fittest, but it is also, at the same time, the 
destruction of the unfit. 

Mr. Darwin says : 4i We have seen that man is 
variable in body and mind, and that the variation- 
al-.' induced either directly or indirectly by the 
same general causes, and obey the same general 
laws as with the lower animals. Man has spread 
widely over the face of the earth, and must have 
been exposed during his incessant migrations to 
the most diversified conditions. They must have 
passed through many climates and changed their 

habits many times before they reached their pre- 
sent homes. They musl have been exposed to 
a struggle f<>r existence and. consequently, t<> the 



139 

rigid law of natural selection. Beneficial variations 
of all kinds have been preserved and injurious ones 
eliminated. If, then, the progenitors of man, in- 
habiting any district, especially one undergoing 
some changed conditions, were divided into two 
equal bodies, the one-half including those with the 
best adapted powers for movement, for gaining 
a subsistence, for self-defence, would, on the aver- 
age, have more offspring than the other and the 
less well endowed half. " 

We may have a good object lesson in the elimi- 
nation of the unfit going on about us constantly. 
In New York City, for 1891, the deaths of children 
under five years of age was 18,112; for 1892 it was 
17,577, or slightly less. This is more than one- 
third, but not quite one-half, of the total deaths at 
all ages for these years. A very large proportion 
of these deaths occurred in the tenement house 
districts, and a very natural question arises in the 
mind : Are the children of those who live in tene- 
ment houses more unfit to survive than those who 
live in houses in which only one family dwells. 
No doubt in most cases the children of those are 
most fit who are most able to provide them with 
hygienic surroundings, the better food and most 
suitable care ; such are usually the prudent and the 
capable. The love of children is usually stronger 
in them. The intelligent affection of parents for 
their youner is one of the incentives to their best 



140 

training. It certainly is Dot nearly bo strong 
among the residents of the crowded quarters of a 
city as among the more prosperous. Any on.- may 
observe this by going with a company of mothers 
on the excursions of some fresh air society, which 
may be seen in most cities. It is hard to find one 
of these mothers who shows what we may call in- 
telligent affection or intelligent car.' of her young. 
Some pathetic instances illustrating this mighl be 
mentioned if necessary. 

When it comes to the question of their physical 
or mental inferiority, a cursory inspection is all 
that is required to show they arc far below the 
average. There is a great want of symmetry of 
hotly and mind— evidence of degeneration. In or- 
der to test the strength of constitution, which is a 
good way to get at one form of physical fitness (<>v 
survival, it seems to me, I made a study of the 
blood of a considerable number of these childr< o 
and found the amount of protoplasm in the color- 
Less blood corpuscles deficient. This shows that 
their power to resisl disease is slight. It musl be 
borne in mind, however, that a strong constitution 
ah. ne is not evidence of fitness for survival. A 
strong person may qoI have prudence, foresight, 
keenness of perception, judgment, and many other 
qualities equally important. The characters just 
mentioned may constitute fitness when there is 
only a moderately vigorous body. GCr. Darwin 



141 

recognized this when he said: " We should bear in 
mind that an animal possessing great size, strength 
and ferocity, and which, like the gorilla, could de- 
fend itself from all enemies would not, perhaps, 
have become sufficiently social, and this would 
effectually have checked the acquirement of the 
higher mental qualities, such as the sympathy and 
love of his fellows. Hence, it might have been of 
immense advantage to men to have sprung from 
some comparatively iveak but social creature." 

Fitness is a complicated condition and not a sim- 
ple one. It depends upon so many external con- 
ditions. Fitness in one place would be unfitness in 
another. Still, other things being equal, strength 
of constitution is a very important factor, and must 
not be left out of consideration. With it there is a 
surplus of material in the body beyond what is re- 
quired for digestion, assimilation, circulation and 
other bodily functions, to enable the parents not 
only to do hard labor, but also to endow their off- 
spring with vigor equal to their own, often greater 
vigor. The feeble individuals will have a small 
amount of stored up material in their bodies which 
we may designate as physiological capital to give 
continous food, warmth and protection to their 
young ; they will not be so well adjusted to their 
environment, and, consequently, natural selection 
will cause their non-survival — or their offspring, if 
not immediately, at no distant period. 



142 

Tin's doctrine of natural selection has been desig- 
nated as cruel, harsh, inexorable, and under the 
influence of the human feeling every effort is in 
our time being made to prevent this wholesome 
check upon the processes <>f nature from having its 
dim influence upon evolution and race progri 
Modern hygiene undertakes to put an end to dis- 
ease, t<> s;ive all who are born, to surround them 
with every influence which can favor their health 
and development. It would stamp out diphtheria, 
scarlet fever, summer complaint, consumption and 
a. host of other diseases which now decimate the 
ranks of the unfit, and often, no doubt, <>f tie- com- 
paratively fit. This would perpetuate a type of 
feeble, unhealthy persons. There would not he 
much hope of more perfect health for the race if 
our hygienists could carry out this daring scheme 
along the lines now working. There seems an an- 
tagonism between nature's methods of bettering 

tie- physical condition of the race and the efforts 
of man himself, acting under the guidance of his 
moral feelings, t«» prevent the action of natural 
law. .Mi-. Darwin recognized this, and referred to 
it in his great work, " The Descent of Man." where 
he says: ""With savages, the weak in body and 
mind are soon eliminated, and those that survive 
c<>min<»iily exhibit a vigorous state ^\' health. We 
civilized men, ^n the other hand, <1«» our utmost t<« 
check thi process <>f elimination. We build asy- 



143 

lums for the imbeciles, the maimed and the sick ; 
we institute poor laws ; and our medical men exert 
their utmost skill to save the life of every one to 
the last moment." 

"There is," says he, "reason to believe that 
vaccination has preserved thousands who from a 
weak constitution would hare succumbed to small- 
pox. Thus the weak members of civilized com- 
munities propagate their kind. No one who has- 
attended to the breeding of domestic animals will 
doubt but this must be highly injurious to the 
human race. Excepting in the case of man him- 
self hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his 
worst animals to breed." 

Other evolutionists, in more recent times, have 
taken a still more somber view of this danger of 
race deterioration through the prevention of the 
full action of the law of natural selection. 

Dr. John Berry Hay craft, in a recent work en- 
titled " Darwinism and Race Progress," has sound- 
ed the alarm in no uncertain tones. He says: 
"Races, therefore, subject to epidemics of a par- 
ticular fever, suffer selections in the hands of the 
microbes of that fever, and those living are sur- 
vivals, cast in the most resisting mould. It may 
not be flattering to our national vanity to look upon 
ourselves as the product of the selection of the 
micro-organism of measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, 
etc. ; but the reasonableness of the conclusion seems 



144 



to be forced upon us when we consider his immuni- 
ty from these diseases as compared with the na- 
tives of the interior of Africa, or the wilds of 
America, whose races have never been so selected, 
and who when attacked for the first time by th< 
diseases, are ravaged almost to extinction. By ex- 
terminating these diseases we shall no douht pre- 
serve countless lives to the community who will. 
in their turn, become race producers ; but in af 
much as the individuals thus preserved will, in 
most cases, belong to the feehler and less resisting 
Of the community, tke race Will not become more 

robust" 

The same author concludes in these words: "In 
the meantime we may view, and not without in- 
quietude, the probability that our statistics, as far 
as they go, indicate that race deterioration has 
already begun as a consequence of that care for the 
individual which has characterized the efforts of 
modern society. The biologist, from quite another 
group of facts, has independently arrived at con- 
clusions which render this view in the highest de- 
gree probable." 

••Tims, the gnat English race, once BO hardy, 

so powerful," says this modern writer, "by hy- 
giene and better physical conditions, is becoming 
weaker and weaker." 

This view of the case is growing largely in 
England and. perhaps, other European countries, 



145 

There is already some evidence of its truthfulness 
in statistics. The death rate for those in middle 
life is rather increasing than diminishing. This 
arises from the fact that the great number of chil- 
dren who formerly died in infancy have lived, but 
being of more feeble constitutions, they swell the 
death rate later on. It is felt, also, in many edu- 
cational institutions in the larger number of youths 
who cannot stand the strain and stress of student 
life. They are, high medical authority says, the 
youth saved from early death by modern hygienic 
and medical care. Formerly, natural selection 
would have chosen them as unfit to survive, and 
there would have remained alive few besides the 
hardy ones with good constitutions, capable of 
great strain, with great powers of endurance. 

It is also shown in the stress of modern com- 
petition, in which there are multitudes who cannot 
stand this strain. It is from these, in some degree, 
that we hear the cry for governmental aid. "We 
must make the conditions of life easier for them," 
say our social reformers, " or they will become * a 
submerged class.' " 

Conflict between Evolutionary Theories and 
our Humane Sentiments. — And now I wish to con- 
sider another phase of my subject. Those who 
have followed closely what was said concerning 
natural selection will have seen that there appears 



146 

to be a conflict between evolutionary theories and 
the humane sentiment of the age— a want of corre- 
spondence between what is being done by natural 
law and what man is t r\ ing to do under the inspir- 
ation of bis loving heart. Can we reconcile this 
want of correspondence? To some extent no doubl 
we can. 

In the first place, the growth of the moral nature 
has always boon bold in high esteem by every na- 
tion and every race. Our moral giants stand high- 
er in the scale of being than our great genera! 
statesmen, even in an ago when moral culture is at 
a low ebb. We draw our moral inspiration from 
Buddha, Socrates and Christ rather than from Aris- 
totle ; their science may be, yes, is, faulty, but 
their spirit is lofty. 

And the moral nature is cultivated in laboring 
for the good of others, in trying to save for a better 
life the poor, the weak, the distressed. All that is 
required is that we do this work wisely, no! un- 
wisely, under the guidance <>f reason, not f eelin 
We want to prevent these calamities rather than 

cure them. 

Another satisfaction arises from the fact thai in 
learning how to perfect the lives of the feeble 
that they may live longer, we also learn how to 
perfect, in a still higher degree, the lives o( the 
strong, or those we call the tit. bo that they also 
will not only Live longer, but be able to live with 



147 

much greater satisfaction the complex lives of our 
times. 

The knowledge which helps the first may help 
the second even more than the first, for they have 
better opportunities and can take advantage of it. 
We may also comfort ourselves with the fact that 
a majority of those with feeble constitutions, whose 
lives have been for a time snatched from the oper- 
ation of the laws of natural selection, will not, 
after all, contribute very extensively to the in- 
crease of the population. Great powers of genera- 
tion and numerous offspring rarely go with physi- 
cal weakness. If there are exceptions they are 
explainable. It is, I think, pretty certain that a 
great majority of such leave few, often no off- 
spring. They find their way into places where 
work is light and the pay small, and they cannot 
afford to marry and care for families, and do not 
do it. 

The law of natural selection will continue to 
work on them so long as its action is required, 
with little regard to the efforts of man to abrogate 
it. Nature works continuously for ages, and 
she works on every part of man, every organ, 
every function. We may almost say she is om- 
nipotent; that she watches for every slight im- 
provement ; that she knows what to do under every 
circumstance. Foiled in one direction, she has 
other means, infinite means, for gaining her ends. 



1 L8 

Man can no more pul a stop to the operation of 
natural law than he can pu1 a stop to the flow of 
Niagara. He may tm-n off a trifle of its water to 
whirl wheels and spindles, bul the mighty river 
flows on until nature makes some changes in the 
watersheds, that mala- its flow impossible. Man, 
on the other hand, acts on his own body in a finite 
waVi He works mainly for immediate, not remote, 
en d Sl Ke changes his methods as his needs chang 
or his knowledge increases. Today he works with 
Limited knowledge of hygiene, inspired by old ideas 
of philanthropy. Tomorrow he may have a vastly 
extended knowledge of this subject and an entirely 
new social science which will enable him to do more 
good and Less harm. 

Ideal op Health.— Let me now consider Borne 
of the things necessary to give us a greater hope 
)nl . fche future of human health, of ourselves and 

for our children. 

The firsl thing necessary is to gel a higher ideal 
f bodily or physical perfection than we have to- 
day, s.r James Paget, in a Lecture on National 
Health, in L884, put this in the following words : 

•• We want," says he, " more ambition for health. 

/ should like to see <> personal ambition for health 

as keen as that for bravery, for beauty, or for sue- 

, i n our athletic games or field sports. I wish 

there was such an ambition for the most perfect 



149 



national health as there is for national renown in 
tear, in art or in commerce/' Bir James then gives 
his own ideal. It is for man or woman to be so full 
of health as to be comparatively indifferent to the 
external conditions of life, and to make a ready 
self -adjustment to all its changes. He should not 
be deemed thoroughly healthy who is made better 
or worse, more fit or less fit, by every change of 
weather or food, or who is bound to observe exact 
rules of living. It is good to observe rules, and to 
some they are absolutely necessary ; but it is better 
to need none but those of moderation, and, observ- 
ing these, to be willing to live and work hard in 
the widest variations of food, air, climate, bathing 
and all other sustenances of life. 

Adaptation to Environment. — This sounds very 
much like saying that to be healthy one must be 
adjusted to his environment; and this is practi- 
cally what Herbert Spencer long before said in Ins 
" Principles of Biology." Here are Ins words : 

" As affording the simplest and most conclusive 
proof that the degree of life varies as the degree of 
correspondence, it remains to point out that perfect 
correspondence would be perfect life. Were there 
no changes in our environment but such as the or- 
ganism had adapted changes to meet, and were it 
never to fail in the efficiency with which it met 
them, there would be eternal existence and uni- 



150 



versa! knowledge. Death by natural decay occurs 
because in old age the relations between assimila 
tion, oxidation, and the genesis of force going on 
in the body gradually fall out of correspondence 
with the relations between oxygen and the food 
and absorption of heal by the environment. Death 
from disease arises either when the organism is 
congenitally defective in its power to balance ordi- 
nary internal actions, or when there has taken 
place some unusual external action to which there 
was no answering internal action. Death by acci- 
dent implies some neighboring mechanical chang 
<»f which the causes are either unobserved from in- 
attention, or are so intricate their results cannot be 
foreseen, and, consequently, certain relations in the 
organism are not adjusted to the relations in the 
environment. Manifestly, if, to every outer co- 
existence and sequence by which it was ever in an 3 
degree affected, the organism presented an answer- 
ing process or act, the simultaneous changes would 
be indefinitely numerous and complex, and the suc- 
jsive ones endless, the correspondence would be 
the greatest conceivable and the Life the highest 
conceivable, both in degree and length." 

Knowledge. Another requirement to promote 
human health is a better knowledge of how the 
constitution of the body may be strengthened, and 
more certitude as to whether such improvements as 



151 

it may receive by hygienic training will be trans- 
mitted to offspring. That human health may be 
improved by right training of the body, a better 
supply of fresh air, greater moderation in living, 
there is not a shadow of doubt ; but is the consti- 
tution itself thus strengthened, or only its original 
vigor conserved and made effective?' I have been 
working on the problem for some time by a series 
of studies on the blood, and especially the amount 
of living matter in the colorless corpuscles, and 
have satisfied myself, from some observations on 
individual cases, that the original constitution of 
feeble persons can be strengthened in early life, 
but the extent of this strengthening seems some- 
what limited. Much original research is still re- 
quired to get at important facts in this direction. 
If some of the study now given to micro-organisms 
could be devoted to this subject it would be most 
useful. The work might be done in connection 
with our numerous schools of physical culture, now 
happily multiplying, and also in our physiological 
laboratories. 

That any gain to the vigor of the constitution can 
be transmitted to the offspring is very probable. 
While education and training do not seem to affect 
the germ cells in any marked degree, nutrition does 
affect them. Whether acquired characters in the 
form of skill, music, language or other like things 
are transmitted or not may still be an open question. 



L62 



Strengthening the constitution seems to be besl 
accomplished l>\ increasing the resources of the 
body beyond its outgo, so thai there Bhall be some 
gain; and this brings up a very important subject, 
thai of the importance of living within the bodily 
income. 

In our fasl age we are likely to use up the physio- 
logical resources in excessive work or dissipation, 
and so rob our children of their jusl inheritance. 

Effects of Living at High Pressure.— One 
generation may, by living at high pressure and un- 
der specially unfavorable conditions, use up more 
than its share of the living matter of its bodies and 
draw a bill on posterity which the next generation 
cannol pay. Many of us now have the benefil of 
ilic calm, unexciting lives of our forefathers. They 
stored up physiological wealth for us ; we are using 
it. The question is. Can we, workingal high pres- 
sure, keep this up during our lives (which, in that 
case, will be on an average rather short), and trans- 
mil to the coming generation a large supply of liv- 
ing matter for their needs? 

How often has it happened in the history of the 
world that people who for generations have exhib- 
ited uo special genius, have blazed ou1 in bursts of 
national greatness for a time, and then almosl died 
()U , | We oughl to take care thai this does not 
happen to us. How often we see a quiel country 



153 

family, whose members have for generations led 
calm, temperate lives, suddenly produce one or two 
great men and then relapse into obscurity. They 
had by their quiet, inexpensive living stored up 
energy for this purpose. On the other hand, how 
often have we seen the reverse — families whose 
energies have been used up in overwork or sensu- 
ality producing offspring below themselves in abili- 
ty. The true rule, however, is neither to waste the 
bodily energy nor to keep too much of it lying idle 
and producing nothing. 

Girls in Manufacturing Districts. — We need 
also a new departure in our manufacturing cen- 
ters. Manufacturing as now conducted is a far less 
healthy occupation than agriculture and horticul- 
ture. The reason for this is that workmen and 
workwomen and even childr< n in most mills and 
factories are exposed for hours at a time to an at- 
mosphere which is loaded with dust and the debris 
of cotton, of wool, and often to that worst of all 
dust which comes from shoddy and rags. They are 
also, in many cases, kept away from light, and in 
cramped positions, and this, continued for years, 
slowly deteriorates the constitution ; and if, in case 
of a war, we were obliged to enlist a large army, 
we should find a far less number of able bodied 
men among the factory workers than among the 
farmers. Let me give you a picture, perhaps one 



154 

of the very worst to be seen anywhere, of a visil 
bo a N«'\\ England paper mill. 

"We left, with a companj of ladies and gentle- 
men, the Lighl of a mellow afternoon to climb some 
steep and dust} stairs under the courteous guid- 
ance of a superintendent. We had hoped to ' 
it all/ * but thai was quite impossible,' said our 
guide, "since the room where the rags are sorted 
is so dusty that the gowns of the ladies would be 
ruined.' So we contented ourselves with le>s dan- 
gerous rooms. But even about the stairway the 
dust cloud hung heavily, obscuring the sighl and 
choking the breath. From the uarrow landing 
the room, into which it was Impossible to venture, 
was in full view. It was long and large. From 
end to end were ranged huge boxes, waisl high. 
Fastened to each were two inverted swords on 
whose sharp blades the workers out the piled-up 
masses of rags, shredding them for the bleaching 
boiler. All the floor was covered with rags, billows 
upon billows of soiled white pieees. in which the 
toilers stood, their feel buried deep beneath the 

dirty, tattered material. 

•• Not a word was spok.n. Even where we stood 
speech was difficult, so completely did the thick 
dusl till eyes, mouth and nostrils, choking, blinding 
and exasperating. The effect of this perfeel silence 
was oppressive. A certain solemnity hung over 
the place. Through the fog of dust the figures 



155 

loomed unnaturally large. All the workers were 
white and hollow-cheeked, with great sunken eyes, 
emphasized hy the circles underneath. Each wo- 
man had bound upon her head some rag, larger or 
finer than the rest, to protect her hair, and the 
gray-white bands folded straight across the fore- 
head showed weirdly in the dim half-light. 

' ' As they stood there in long, silent rows, cutting, 
cutting, cutting, they looked like the priestesses of 
some ancient and frightful ceremonial. We were 
glad to escape, to exchange the dust, the grime, 
the wan faces, and the burning eyes for the breath 
of cool wind, the full glow of the sunlight, and the 
face of nature herself, so many of whose human 
children have no time to know or learn her ways. 

"It gave a tragic significance to the memory of 
those silent workers to know that they have but a 
few years to live/' 

The same unfortunate condition <>i" things is com- 
plained of in Manchester, England, one of the great- 
est manufacturing centers in the world. "The 
heated air of the mills, the dust, lack of light, the 
employment of children," says the London Lancet, 
"are causing vast deterioration and a most disas- 
trous effect on the morals of the people. Football 
is popular, but all the players are imported from 
Scotland. The natives simply look on and shout. If 
they want men for policemen or constables, they go 
to Scotland or Ireland for them. The women and 



L56 

girls are equally stunted and feeble." In the man- 
ufacturing towns the prosped for a Btrong, healthy 
race From such materia] is poor indeed. 

Co-operation : an Example.- It is difficult i 
the remedy for this Btate of things. Probably the 
evolution of a higher standard of ethic-, a higher 
sense of justice, and a more thorough belief that 
health is a duty, may do something. Meantime it 
is important thai the working man should do all he 
enn lor himself; and perhaps I can <!<> no better 
than to give here a picture of what some of them 
have done under the inspiration of co-operation, not 
only for their health hut for their pockets. 

It is a picture of a -Teat manufacturing establish- 
menj of the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Soci- 
ety, at Shieldhall, uearGlasgow, on theClyde. This 
society is a federation of all the retail s«><-i.ti. 
Scotland. 238 in number, with a membership of over 
150,000 persons. The society began <>n a moderate 
scale man} years ago, hut it- development ha- been 
marvelous. In is>; it started out on a career which 
has since continued, owing to the indomitable en- 
ergy <-f one of it- members, himself a working man. 
The buildings stand in a very healthy locality, the 
health of the working force being considered of the 
firsl importance. The} Beem to have Learned that 
sickness is loss— lossof tine of productive energy— 
and that it isa costly matter. A- Mr. Beecheronce 



157 

said, "it is the one burden that bends, almost 
breaks, the back of society." 

These Scotchmen are realizing, just as far as is 
possible, the condition of a sound mind in a sound 
body. They recognize the rights of the laborer to 
health, and place him in a position while working, 
so that his body may not deteriorate any more than 
is natural for it to do as age advances. The living 
machine must not be harmed more than the (had 
machinery. The land consists of 12 acres, and cost 
$2,500 an acre; nearly all of it is covered with fine 
buildings, in which 10 different industries are car- 
ried on, many of them on a large scale. Every one 
of these buildings is constructed after modern meth- 
ods, with every requirement, not only for conveni- 
ence but for health. The workrooms are cosy and 
spacious, well ventilated, warmed in cold weather 
by steam, and lighted by electricity. The best san- 
itary arrangements known have been introduced, 
and the excellent health of the workmen and work- 
women, of whom there are over 1,000 of each, tells 
the story of sanitation. 

Two large dining-rooms, one for men and one for 
women, are provided; also two large reading-rooms 
with all necessary papers, periodicals, books and 
means of amusement. Its only lack is a gymna- 
sium and a field for athletic sports, but these may 
in time be added. Food of the best quality is sup- 
plied for all who desire it at cost. A dish of oatmeal 



1 58 

and milk costs three cents; a Large scon.- with tea or 
coffee, tlic same; Scotch broth or soup, two cents; 
stewed meat and potatoes, eighl cents; roast beef 
or mutton, with potatoes, ten cents; a good and 
sufficient meal need no1 cos! over twelve cents. 
Standard wages are paid, and two and one-half 
hours Less time demanded than in private simp-. 

Men work fifty-three hours weekly, women forty- 
four. Most of the latter work in the shirt factory, 
but they do not need to sing Bood's Song of the 
shirt. Sweating is unknown; every worker, from 
the youngesl to the oldest, receives his or her share 
of the profits, which amount toahoul $15,000 yearly. 

Bere we have an almosl ideal manufacturing 
tablishment, and if all were such we should have 
Liigher hopes for human health in the immediate 
future for our workers in factories. It was the out- 
growth, the efforl of the Scotch, a highly intellect- 
ual face, to adjusl itself to its environment. 
sitv and competition acting on them forced them to 
new and hotter adjustments. Such a result could 
hardly have been achieved by a Less hard-headed 

and practical people, a race on which .volution lias 

for ages produced some of its besl effects, 

Btgiene. — Bui 1 fancy you ask me, Ls there any 

hope that in the future evolution, and with it ad- 
justment to environment, will carry man so far 
that an ideal state <>f health will be the lot of all ? 



159 

This is what hygiene promises. Is it a vain hope ? 
If we look at what older sciences have done for 
man we find much to encourage us. In astronomy, 
by the aid of mathematics, we can calculate with 
certitude the date of future eclipses. In many 
other sciences we can make accurate predictions 
and accomplish results of the greatest importance. 
Indeed, science has become almost our only author- 
ity. Imperfect as it yet is, we trust it, perhaps, 
too implicitly. The science of hygiene is the young- 
est of all the sciences. Not that the Greeks, the 
Hebrews, the Hindoos and Chinese did not have 
some practical knowledge on the subject, but it 
was rude and empirical. With the discoveries of 
micro-organisms as the cause of a series of the 
worst diseases, we have begun to place hygiene 
alongside mathematics and chemistry. 

We now know the origin of many diseases which 
formerly were enveloped in mystery. Can we re- 
move them? That is the next task. Hygiene will 
in the future busy itself with this great question. 
It has, it is believed, already made many cities 
proof, or almost proof, against cholera and yellow 
fever. It will try to make them proof against 
other contagious diseases also, and it will without 
doubt succeed: But its work will not then have 
been accomplished. We may avoid the causes of 
disease and still be puny creatures. Our great task 
will be the building up of bodies equal to the needs 



160 

of <>ur environment. This we have, in a small 
way, already begun to do— imitating the ancient 
Greeks— in our schools of physical culture, where 
the body can be trained up to it- best, and also in 
our laboratories for psychological research, in 
which the relation of mind and body are being 
carefully investigated, where every subjeel con- 
nected with every function is being studied, even 
weariness, anger, hope, despair, drink, food, sleep, 
the weather, and their effects on function. The 
results of Mich knowledge will prove beyond a 
doubt that the health of the body, a- well as of 
the mind, is of the highest importance for success 
in life, for happiness and usefulness, and thai we 
can do much to secure both. 

My own personal hope for the future of human 
health lie- in the evolution and spread of this gospel 
of hygiene. 

Hygiene interests itself in all that relates to hu- 
man well-being. It may he defined a- the ethics 
of the body— the science of I me ////in/. It prom- 
ises health to all who obey its laws. It makes no 
such promise t<> those who disregard them. In the 
future, no doubt, a higher average of health will 
1,,- the result of our ever-increasing knowledge; 
and whenever wo are able and willing to apply this 
knowledge t<> our <>wn bodily and mental condud 
we shall be amply rewarded. This much we can 
safely promise, hut no more. On the contrary, the 



161 

violators of hygienic laws will, with their offspring, 
suffer in the future as in the past, and that suffer- 
ing will be in the form of pain, disease, degenera- 
tion, premature death. 

This may seem hard to many who are sensitive 
to the pains and sorrows of the world, and some 
have gone so far as to attribute to the author of 
nature, the unknown cause of all things, a charac- 
ter anything but good. But this is a very erroneous 
way of looking at the subject. To discuss it fully 
we should have to consider the question of the mys- 
tery of evil, which cannot be done here. Suffice it 
to say, the creation, the evolution of the race, is by 
law. Causes produce their legitimate results. If 
it were not so, our sufferings might be far greater, 
and no progress would result. Let us be thankful 
that nature is as it is, and let us do our best to put 
our lives in harmony with it. By so doing, we may 
in the end attain all that we strive for. 



THE GERM PLASM; ITS RELATION TO OFF- 
SPRING. 



The germ plasm is a most interesting and re- 
markable substance. It must be interesting, for 
everything which relates to life and reproduction 
is interesting. It must be remarkable, for out 
it, under proper conditions, remarkable results are 
produced. Although our knowledge of its nature 
is very imperfect, yel let us not on this account 
refuse to try to understand what little is known. 

In the firsl place, the germ plasm of animals 
which reproduce sexually is composed of two germ 
plasms — that of the male, and thai of the female. 
Thai of the male is called the spermatozoon (pro- 
nounced sper'ma-to-zoon). It is sometimes called 
spermatozoid, and the plural is spermatozoa. It 
is exceedingly small, the smallest of any cell in the 
body, and has the power to move from place to 
place. Tin -so cells are produced in enormous num- 
bers, and so far as they have been observed under 
the microscope they differ considerably in power 
<.f movemenl and in perfection of development. 
Considering their small size, they musl make a 



163 

very long journey to find the ovum ; and if they 
were only few in number, they would rarely 
succeed ; but existing in large numbers, for there 
are millions of them produced in each sexual act 
of the male, some of them are pretty sure to do so, 
and, probably in most cases, it would be those 
most vigorous and capable of making the journey 
most direct and in the least time. 

That of the female is called the ovum, or egg ; 
plural, ova. Only a small number are produced, 
when compared with the number of the male 
spermatozoa, but there are quite enough for the 
ends they are to serve. They have not the same 
power of movement, though they do move some- 
what as the amseba does. They are also very 
much larger than the male cells. 

The eggs of all mammals look alike as they come 
from the ovaries, but take on some changes after- 
ward. Hseckel says : " Every primitive egg being 
an entirely simple, somewhat round, moving, na- 
ked cell, possesses no membrane, and consists only 
of a nucleus and protoplasm. These two parts 
have long borne distinctive names : the protoplasm 
being called the vitellus, or yelk, and the nucleus 
the germinal vesicle (vesicula germinativa)." The 
same author also says: ''The human egg cannot 
be distinguished from that of most other mammals, 
either in its immature or in its more complete con- 
dition. Its form, its size, its composition, are ap- 



104 

proximately bhe same in all. In its fully devel- 
oped condition it lias an average diameter of one- 
tenth of a line— about the one hundred and twen- 
tieth pari of nn inch. If the mammalian egg is 
properly isolated, and held on a plate of glass 
towardsthe light, it appears t<> the eye as a verj 
tine point. The normal eggs of mosl of the higher 
mammals are of almosl exactly the same size. 
The} have the same spherical* form ; always the 
same characteristic covering; always the same 
clear, round germinal vescicle with its dark germ- 
inal spot. Even under the highest power of our 
best microscopes there appears to be no essential 
difference between the eggs of a human being 
and that of the ape. the dog, the cat OT other ani- 
mal. This similarity is one of appearance only. 
There is a difference, and of this I shall speak 
later. It may be asked if the egg of a bird is the 
same as the egg of a mammal. The mature bird's 
,..4-4-. as it is laid in the nest, differs materially 
from that of any mammal ; but in its miniature 
form, as found in the hen's ovary, it is also the 
same. The egg of a bird after it leaves the ovary, 
and as it passes along the oviduct, takes on Becre- 
tions in its passage which it converts into yelk. 
and afterwards a Bhell is added to give it protec- 
tion in the external world, where it must undergo 
incubation before it can become a bird ; but bet 
it takes on it- shell it has been fertilized, and this 



165 

also causes other changes. Haeckel says : " After 
the ripe egg of the bird has left the ovary, and 
has been fertilized in the oviduct, it surrounds 
itself with various coverings which are secreted 
from the inner surface of the oviduct. The thick 
layer of transparent albumen first forms round the 
yellow yelk ; this is followed by the formation of 
the outer calcareous shell, within which is another 
envelope, or skin. All these coverings and addi- 
tions which are gradually formed round the egg 
are of no importance to the development of the 
embryo ; they are parts which have nothing to do 
with the simple egg cell. Even in the case of 
other animals we often find large eggs with thick 
coverings. For example, the shark's ; but even in 
this case the egg is originally exactly similar to 
those of mammals when in its primitive condition 
as it comes from the ovary. In the case of the 
bird these additions serve only as food for the 
growing embryo, which, in the case of mammals, 
is furnished by a stream of the mother's blood, 
making 'stored-up' nutriment unneccessary." 

Before, however, we can have true genu plasm 
the mother cell must be fertilized by the male cell. 
This is true of all the higher plants and animals. 
There are some low plants and animals in which 
fertilization by the male cell is not required. This 
has been called virginal generation. In no mam- 
mal is this possible. 



166 

How fertilization takes place and what it signi- 
fies are both importanl questions which have do1 
been entirely settled, and it almosl seems as if thej 

could doI be settled in some of their details, except 
in the lower forms of life. Nature has so pro- 
tected the process from observation in the higher 
animals thai it cannol be studied m detail ; but in 
plants and the lowest animals it has been observed 
with some success, and we may infer that the 
process is very much the same in the higher ani- 
mals. 

Eaeckel, in Ins great work on the Evolution of 
Man, tells us that "The process of fertilization in 
sextial generation depends essentially on the fact 
that two dissimilar cells meet ami blend. In for- 
mer times the strangest views prevailed with re- 
gard to this act. Men have always been disposed 
to regard it as thoroughly mystical, and the most 
widely different hypotheses have been framed t<> 
account for it. It is only within a few years that 
Closer study has shown that the whole process of 

fertilization is extremely simple, and entirely with- 
out special mystery. Essentially, it consists mere- 
ly in the fact that the male sperm-cell coalesces 

with the female egg-cell. Owing t<> its sinu<>u^ 
movements, the verj mobile sperm-cell finds its 
way to the female egg-cell, penetrates the mem- 
brane <>f the latter by a perforating motion, and 
coalesces wit h its cell material. 



lor 

" A poet might find in this circumstance a capi- 
tal opportunity for painting in glowing colors the 
wonderful mystery of fertilization ; he might de- 
scribe the struggles of the ' seed animalcules ' 
eagerly dancing round the egg-cell shut up in its 
many coverings, disputing the passage through the 
minute pore-canals of the chorion, and then of pur- 
pose burying themselves in the protoplasm of the 
yelk mass, where, in a spirit of self-sacrifice, they 
competely efface themselves in the better 'ego.' 
But the critical naturalist very prosaically con- 
ceives this poetical incident, this ' crown of love,' 
as the mere coalescence of two cells ! The result 
of this is, that in the first place the egg-cell is ren- 
dered capable of further evolution, and, secondly, 
that the hereditary qualities of both parents can 
be transmitted to the child." 

By coalescence is understood, growing together, 
not mingling as water and milk might when 
mixed. More recent observations indicate that 
during coalescence both the male and female cells 
throw off some portions of their substance. It is 
also considered that the important part of each cell 
is its nucleus. In it all hereditary characteristics 
are stored up. If the nucleus be absent in either 
cell these cells cannot reproduce. In unicellular, 
or one-celled, organisms, it has been found in mul- 
tiplication by division, a part of the nucleus must 
go with each half, otherwise the half without a 



L68 

part of it docs imt -tow. In experiments in labora- 
tories, artificial division of simple organisms may 
be made, and eacb fragment will become a perfect 
creature if only a very small piece of the nucleus 
goes with the separated portion; but if a part is 
cut off without any of the nucleus, then, while it 
may live on for a short time, it can Dot grow or 
propagate. 

Possibly we have here an explanation of some 
hereditary phenomena in human beings. If there 
is an unequal division, and more of the male than 
of the female nucleus, the child might, as a result, 
inherit more of the father's than of the mother's 
characteristics, or the reverse. 

What has been so far said about the germ plasm 
has been to enable the reader to possess a degree 
of intelligence on the nature of fertilization, so far 
as it is known; but from a practical standpoint 
the most important knowledge for those prospective 
parents who wish to practice intelligent stirpicul- 
ture is to understand that the health of the germ 
plasm or fertilized ovum depends on the health of 
the parents. By health, I mean the possession of 

a ej.od constitution, t<> which will he added a 
Strong held on life, power to do and to endure, 
and quickly to recover from weariness. Disease 
will be easily warded off in such persons, so that 
there will be generally good health. Such a con- 
dition of body is usually inherited. It depends on 



169 

the possession of a large supply in the body of liv- 
ing matter — firm muscles, a good heart, lungs and 
digestive organs. Those who are feeble cannot en- 
dure much; whose heart, lungs and digestive or- 
gans are weak; whose hold on life is slight, can 
rarely endow their offspring with these high quali- 
ties. Their children may live if no great strain 
comes upon them; but if they must take an active 
part in the struggle and competition going on in 
the world they cannot endure it. Mr. Spencer puts 
the case very aptly in his work on Ethics where he 
says: "It results that where maternal vigor is 
great, and the surplus vitality consequently large, 
a long series of children may be borne before any 
deterioration in their quality becomes marked; 
while, on the other hand, a mother with but a 
small surplus may soon cease altogether to repro- 
duce. Further, it results that variations in the 
state of health of parents which involves variations 
in the surplus vitality have their effects on the 
constitutions of offspring to the extent that off- 
spring borne during greatly deranged maternal 
health are decidedly feebler. And then, lastly and 
.chiefly, it results that after the constitutional vigor 
has culminated, and there has commenced that 
gradual decline which in some twenty years or so 
brings absolute infertility, there goes on a grad- 
ual decrease in that surplus vitality on which the 
production of offspring depends, and a consequent 



L70 

deterioration in the quality of such offspring. 
This which is a priori conclusion is verified a pos- 
teriori, 

"Mr. J. Mathews Duncan, in his work on Fecun- 
dity, Fertility. Sterility and allied topics, has given 
results of statistics which show that mothers of 
twenty-five bear the finest infants, and that from 
mothers whose ages at marriage range from twen- 
ty to twenty-five years there come infants which 
have a lower rate of mortality than those resulting 
from marriages consummated when the mothers' 
a-cs are smaller or greater. The apparent slight in- 
congruity between these two statements being due 
to the fact that whereas marriages commenced be- 
fore twenty and twenty-five cover the whole of 
the period of highest vigor, marriages commenced 
at live and twenty cover a period which lacks the 
years during which vigor is rising to its climax 
and includes only tic years of decline from the cli- 
max." 

This quotation from Mr. Spencer needs a quali- 
fying remark. -Mi-. G-alton, in his work on Hered- 
itary Genius, found that the average age of moth- 
ers of men of the greatest ability was about thirty. 
and of their fathers thirty-five. In such cases, the 
physical and intellectual strength must have been 
above the average, and, consequently, it continued 
to a mere advanced age. Besides, those of great 
ability mature later. 



171 

It may also be added that Duncan's statistics, 
quoted by Spencer, are average statistics gathered 
from tables of mortality, and include every class 
of persons. Now, average statistics do not apply to 
individual cases, and they would not apply to those 
highly endowed physically and intellectually. 

Further, those who are well endowed at birth 
and whose lives are in accordance with hygienic 
law, that is, those who do not squander their 
physiological resources by sensuality, by intem- 
perance, or by excesses of any sort retain their 
health to a greater age than those whose lives are 
the reverse. Such are of a youthful physiological 
age, which is not altogether determined by the 
actual number of years they have lived, but by 
very high physiological conditions. 

From all this we conclude that a very important 
rule in the production of offspring, if we, would 
have those offspring superior, is to maintain a high 
degree of health — a condition in which there is a 
surplus of physiological capital to produce children 
with endowments equal to. if not superior to, their 
parents. 

Another subject requires treatment here. It is 
the effect of alcohol on offspring. We are yet 
lacking in statistics giving the facts we need to 
know on this subject ; but the general observation 
of competent persons who have had good oppor- 
tunities to study it may teach us something. Alco- 



hoi, in its circulation in the blood, penetrates '-very 
pari ; qo1 even the germ plasm escapes. Demme 
studied ten families of drinkers and ten families 
of temperate persons. The direct posterity of the 
ten families of drinkers included fifty-seven chil- 
dren. Of these, twenty-five died in thefirsl weeks 
and months of their lives ; six were idiots ; in five 
a striking- backwardness of their longitudinal 
growth was observed ; five were affected with epi- 
lepsy, and five with inborn diseases. Thus, of the 
fifty-seven children of drinkers only ten, or 17.5 
per cent., had normal constitutions and healthful 
growth. The ten sober families had sixty-one chil- 
dren, five only dying in the first works « four were 
affected with curable diseases of the nervous - 
tem; two only had inhorn defects. The remaining 
fifty, 81.9 per cent., were normal in their consti- 
tutions and development. 

In this statement we have a graphic ohject lesson 
of the evil efforts of alcohol on the germ plasm. 
Natural -election had far more to do in removing 
the-.' untit to survive in the intemperate than in 
the temperate families. 

A knowledge of the evil effects of alcohol <>u the 
unborn child was known to the ancients. The 
mother of Sampson was warned " uol to drink any 
wine or strong drink nor to eat any unclean thing " 
because she was to conceive and bear a son who was 
to deliver Lsrael out of the hands of the Philistim 



173 

Manoah was so interested in what the angel of the 
Lord had s-aid to his wife that he sought an inter- 
view with him for further confirmation, and asked : 
"How shall we order the child, and how shall we 
do unto him ? " evidently meaning, "How shall we 
train and educate him ? " and the same advice was 
given as before. Whatever view the reader may 
hold as to the inspiration or non-inspiration of the 
Bible, certainly this advice was good. Other ex- 
amples similar to it are to be found, not only in 
the same book, but in numerous historical works, 
and also abundant evidence in our own time of 
the evil effects of alcoholic drinks on unborn chil- 
dren giving them a tendency to insanity, idiocy and 
other nervous diseases. A whole book might be 
written on this branch of our subject. 

To what extent food affects the germ plasm we 
remain somewhat in ignorance. We know that it 
is from it that the body is nourished, and from it 
also the stored up or surplus matter in our systems 
is obtained. The larger the surplus the more high- 
ly will the offspring be endowed with energy is 
a fact clearly set forth by Mr. Spencer. A surplus 
of fatty food stored up in the body, however, can- 
not be of much service and may prove injurious. 
A deficiency of nitrogenous food would also, it 
seems to me, be an evil. The germ plasm, or its 
most important part, is a highly nitrogenous sub- 
stance, like all protoplasm, or living matter. The 



i; i 



highest form of germ plasm, that with a most com 
pies molecular structure, would hardly be formed 

if there was a deficiency of nitrogenous matter m 
tlie blood. 

Air is also food the same as bread i->. The ac 
tivities, the chemical changes in the body, are 
mainly, though qo1 entirely, between the oxygen 
of the air and the carbon and hydrogen of our 
feed. The body is quite as much injured by a de- 
ficiency «>f aii- inhaled into the lungs Lv exercise 
as by a. deficiency <»f food, though the injury may 
be <>f a different nature. Physicians and oth< 
have long ago observed that the offspring of par- 
ents living much in the open air and sunlight are 
healthier and stronger than those <>f parents living 
in confined spaces, where air and light are de- 
ficient. Air which is impure, which is loaded with 
poisonous matter, if inhaled \\>v a long time by the 
mother, lowers the standard of her health. In 
malarious regions, the vigor of the offspring is less 
and tin- number who die in infancy greater, than 
in regions where the air and water are pure. 
Many years ago I remember reading in one of the 
journals devoted to sanitary science published in 
London, an account of a rural town where both air 
and water were of extraordinary purity, and in 
this town a very large percentage of the children 
born lived in --row n, maturity. There is also an 
isolated region in France, bordering on the sea. 



175 

where both air, water and climate are unusually 
salubrious, and though intermarriage has been 
practiced for a long time among the several thou- 
sand inhabitants, the people are remarkably well 
formed and healthy. Similar facts have been ob- 
served in other places. They indicate to us that a 
healthful climate, with good air and water, are im- 
portant factors in all true stirpiculture. 

While all diseases which exhaust the physio- 
logical resources of the system are detrimental to 
the offspring, there are certain ones which are 
peculiarly so. Specific diseases or those resulting 
from a sensual life are the first to be mentioned. 
If the bodies of either father or mother become 
saturated with the poison, which is probably a 
germ, then the child born of such parents will 
certainly be infected and either die at birth or live 
only a short and feeble life. It is one of the pen- 
alties of an impure life — a very severe one, no 
doubt, but perhaps not too severe, that the off- 
spring of the sensualist must suffer the penalties 
for its parent's physiological sins. Medical men 
have long been trying to discover a remedy which 
will make it safe for a man infected with specific 
disease to marry and become a father, but so far 
they have not had much success. It is doubtful if 
they ever will. 

Epilepsy is another disease which is so often 
transmitted to children that any one of either sex 



L76 

suffering from it had better abstain from parent- 
age. If one parent is remarkably healthy, the 
children may escape the severesl form of penalty; 
but even then they may suffer from nervousness 
ami other diseases, and rarely enjoy robusl health, 
rhe question whether persons who have a con- 
sumptive tendency should become parents or doI 
has frequently boon discussed by sanitarians, but 
never settled. Such persons are frequently in- 
tellectual, and often of an unsually cheerful and 
hopeful disposition. They are, in most cases, quite 
prolific. In the female they generally make ex- 
cellenl wives and mothers; m the case of the male, 
they arc not uncommonly good providers for their 
families, and also good fathers. Except in the 
worst cases, does the welfare of the race demand 
that they shall not marry and become parents. 
Probably not. Bui we musl advise them to take 
the very besl care of their imperfect bodies; to 
develop their chests by wise but not excessive 
physical training; to husband their physiological 
resources carefully ; not to marry young, nor rear 
too many children. Excessive childbearing is a 
prolific cause in women of consumption, and exc 
sive sexual indulgence is a frequent cause <>f it 

ill both sexes. 

These remarks should not he construed to mean 
that those who are already in the early stages of 
this disease, or whose families on both sides ha 



177 

been deeply affected by it, may become parents. 
They should not. But in the present state of 
society, we cannot hold men and women up to an 
ideal standard. Some slight risks may be taken, 
but not too great ones. As the race progresses in 
knowledge, however, we may raise our standards, 
and finally make them so high that no one with 
a tendency to any serious disease which is likely 
to affect the offspring unfavorably shall have any 
right to contribute to the world's population. 

I have mentioned only a few of the many dis- 
eases which affect the germ plasm unfavorably. 
It is hardly necessary to extend the list. 

One other subject deserves consideration, when 
I will bring this chapter to a close. Every child 
born into the world is, to a certain extent, an ex- 
periment. That is to say, the parents cannot pre- 
dict its sex, nor what its chief characteristics will 
be. These depend on what potentialities are stored 
up in the germ plasm. If this be formed by parents 
in good health, with a surplus of vital force, and 
a long line of ancestors with normal lives, we may 
believe that if the environment be favorable, the 
child will develop so as to show the same charac- 
teristics, perhaps in an even higher degree. What- 
ever variations there are will not be much below or 
above the average line of its ancestors. The con- 
genital characters will tend to be transmitted. 
They are in the germ plasm, even in great detail. 



IT* 



Whether the acquired ones are transmitted may 

still be uncertain; but whether they are or not, 
normal right living will be sure to have good 
effects. Obey the Laws of life and far better re- 
sults will follow them if they are disobeyed. 



FEWER AND BETTER CHILDREN. 



In the present age suggestions on this subject 
may seem superfluous. The more highly educated 
and wealthy classes have already sufficiently re- 
duced the number of children which they bring 
into the world. But are these offspring any better 
than they would have been had their parents given 
birth to a larger number ? 

Mr. Darwin did not think much could be done 
to improve the race by parents limiting the num- 
ber of their offspring. He would trust to natural 
selection to weed out the unfit, and to sexual selec- 
tion as an aid. He thus describes the probable 
manner of action of sexual selection among prime- 
val men : " The strongest and most vigorous men — 
those who could best defend and hunt for their 
families ; those who were provided with the best 
weapons and possessed the most property, such as 
a large number of dogs or other animals — would 
succeed in rearing a greater average number of 
offspring than the weaker and poorer members of 
the same tribes. Such men would doubtless gener- 
ally be able to select the more attractive women. 



L80 



. . . If, then, this be admitted, it would he an 
unexplainable circumstance if the selection of the 
more attractive women by tin* more powerful men 
of the tribes, who would rear on the average a 
greater number of children did not, after the Lapse 
of generations, modify the character of the tribes." 

The way in which the tribe would be modified 
would he by its producing better children. Of 
course among primitive men the richer and more 
powerful had several wives, hut it is not likely 
that the number of children by each one was hi; 

Natural selection is, however, a painful pro< 
necessary, no doubt, where ignorance prevails; 
hm if the number of children of each pair could 
be limited and of a superior character, so far as 
vigor and adaption to environment are concerned, 
would there not be less need for natural selec- 
tion with all its evils? It seems to us that this 
would be so. 

We have already quoted Grant Allen as favoring 
abstainence from parenthood on the pari of the un- 
fit and the duty on the part of the fit to become 
parents, and. theoretically, Mr. Allen is right ; but 
excepl as both of these classes are swayed by duty 
we would make little progress in this way. \ 
majority of mankind think they are the fit. Why 
should they crucify their desires for the benefit of 
the race? As mankind becomes more moral Mr. 
AJlen's views may have a Larger influence <»n 



181 



thought than now ; but before that time little can 
be expected from them. 

Mr. Spencer says: "We have fallen upon evil 
times, in which it has come to be an accepted doc- 
trine that part of the responsibilities [of parent- 
hood] are to be discharged, not by parents, but by 
the public — a part which is gradually becoming a 
larger part, and threatens to become the whole. 
Agitators and legislators have united in spreading 
a theory which, logically followed out, ends in the 
monstrous conclusion that it is for parents to beget 
children and for society to take care of them. The 
political ethics now in fashion makes the unhesi- 
tating assumption that while each man, as par- 
ent, is not responsible for the mental culture of 
his offspring he is, as a citizen along with other 
citizens, responsible for the mental culture of all 
other men's offspring ! And this absurd doctrine 
has now become so well established that people 
raise their eyes in astonishment if you deny. But 
this ignoring of the truth, that only by due dis- 
charge of parental responsibilities has all life on 
the earth arisen, and that only through the better 
discharge of them have there gradually been made 
possible better types of life, is, in the long run, 
fatal. Breach of natural law will, in this case, 
as in all cases, be followed in due time by nature's 
revenge — a revenge which will be terrible in pro- 
portion as the breach has been great. A system 



L82 



under which parental duties are performed whole- 
sale by those who are not parents, under the plea 
thai main parents cannot or will not perform their 
duties — a system which fosters the inferior chil- 
dren of inferior parents at fche cosl of superior 
parents and consequent injury of superior chil- 
dren — a system which thus helps incapahles to 
multiply and hinders the multiplication of capahles 
or diminishes their capability must bring dec 
and ultimate extinction, A society which persists 
in such a system must — other things equal — goto 
the wall in the competition with a society which 
does not commit this folly of nourishing its worst 
at the expense of its best." 

We have evidence among primitive people thai 
they understand the necessity of Limiting offspring, 
and practice it a perfectly healthful way. The 
nativesof Uganda, a region in Central Africa, offers 
an illustration: "The women rarely have more 
than two or three children; the practice is that 
when a woman lias borne a child she is to live 
apart from her husband for two years, at which 
age children are weaned." 

Seaman, Bpeaking of the Fijians, says: "After 
childbirth husband and wife keep apart three and 
even four years, so that no other baby may inter- 
fere with the time considered necessary for suckl- 
ing children." 

Some tit'tv years ago there Lived in New Fork a 



183 



young couple, strong, healthy, ambitious to be 
rich, and both saving and industrious enough to 
become so under ordinary conditions. The hus- 
band was in a business which required constant 
attention; and in order to promote it and save the 
expense of help which he thought he could not 
afford, he labored nights, often up to the hours of 
twelve and sometimes one o'clock, and then arose 
early and went at it again. His wife sympathized 
with him in all his undertakings, helped him in 
every way possible, even to the sharing of his mid- 
night toils. In no way did either of them spare 
themselves. They knew something of the evils of 
poverty, and were determined that it should not 
always be their lot. Fortune favored them, and 
their bank account grew larger and larger until 
they could count the value of their possessions as 
amounting to several million dollars. They lived 
in a fine country seat, and could gratify every 
wish, so far as food, clothing, books and travel 
were concerned. During their early married life, 
when the strain of work was the greatest, two 
children were born unto them, both boys, and they 
are alive today; but are they a comfort to their 
parents, and a help in their declining years? In- 
stead of this they are both deformed and cripples, 
unable to help themselves or do any labor. Their 
family physician has told me that the overwork 
and privation of the parents at the time of their 



184 

birth and before, was undoubtedly the cause of the 
children's inferiority. A younger son born after 
the wife had ceased fco toil like a slave, ■_ >me 

promise of being a man of character. 

We have here a typical case of Btrong, healthy 
parents, with a limited number of offspring, yet 
they were not superior. On the oilier hand, it 
would he easy to collect a large number of in- 
stances where the children in large families have 
had superior endowments. Take Benjamin Frank- 
lin as an example. He was the fifteenth child of 
his father, Josiah Franklin, and the eighth of the 
ten children of his mother. 

It seems that superiority is a result of great 
rigor and perfection of body and mind and of 
abundant reproductive power. Where this is ab- 
sent the children will hardly be superior. Yet in 
both cases a certain degree of limitation ought fco 
be advantageous. 

In conclusion, let me say what I have indirectly 
said already. Let the strong, the capable and the 
id rear as many children as they can without 
overburdening themselves in any way. and let the 
weak, the imperfect and the bad raise few or none, 
but devote their lives to perfecting their own 
characters. In this way the future race will be 
modified for good and not for evil. 



A THEORETICAL BABY. 



Reported by reqtiest of Dr. Rolbrook. 



It was our first baby. I was making a living as 
a doctor by writing articles on the general care of 
"the health; and my wife before her marriage had 
been a kindergartner, a trainer of kindergartners, 
and a lecturer to mothers on the scientific and ex- 
pert methods of raising children aright. We be- 
lieved in the theories we had taught, and our baby 
got nothing else from the start. According to the 
first applied theory, we made our temporary home 
before the boy began to be, in the Rocky Mountains 
of Colorado; and were a large part of the time 
either in our garden or on horseback, in this perfect 
outdoor climate. My wife was entirely in love with 
me, and I made each day count for nothing more 
certainly than to deserve and return that sentiment 
of hers. We lived simply but freely, and had next 
to no anxieties. My wife had practiced general 
gymnastics for years; but for months prior to the 
birth of her boy, she every day went through with 
a series of special maternal gymnastics, by which 
the muscles that aid in parturition can be made 



186 

strong and entirely to be relied upon. We were re- 
warded for this outlay of time in a delivery that 
was rapid and easy, without more than an ounce of 
haemorrhage, and everything bo perfectly con- 
trolled that — except for the inconvenience of it — the 
presence and aid of the physician (myself) might 
have been dispensed with. Recovery was rapid 
also. My wife made no haste to get up, keeping 
quiet most of the time for two weeks, to ensure 
good milk. But she did a family washing- without 
effort after three weeks, and was on horseback 
again by the sixth week. The baby was not 
severed from his mother till ten minutes after birth 
(ensuring a better blood supply). Then he got no 
bath, no food, no dressing process; but was simply 
swathed in cotton batting and laid aside for six 
hours in a padded box-bed, surrounded by bottles of 
hot water, and covered with plenty of soft blank- 
to sleep and get used to his new environment. I »n 
the second day we began rubbing him daily from 
head to foot with vaseline. His first bath, with a 
flannel cloth dipped in warm milk diluted with Boft 
water and without snap, came when he was a week 
old, and was followed by the thorough rub with 
vaseline. This bath he has had nearly every day up 
to date. He lias often cried, or crowed and begged 
for this bath; but never cried during its perform- 
ance, except when his clothes were being replaced. 

On the contrary, he enjoys every momeni of it. 



187 

Feeding began with a meal every hour of the 
twenty-four, for the first week. Then night feed- 
ing was reduced to two meals, and he was fed 
every two hours, from four or five o'clock in the 
morning till nine at night, till two months old. 
About then he began sleeping right through the 
nights; and until three months old was fed every 
three hours of the day time; then for a month lie 
went four hours between his meals. At his fourth 
month began the present regime of four meals per 
diem. Now and then he has cried in the night 
from thirst, and a few spoonsful of cold water have 
sufficed to send him off to sleep again. All in all, I 
think I could count on my fingers the times that he 
has wakened us out of hours, and not once has any- 
one walked the floor, with him. In fact, no di- 
versions of this sort have ever been practiced on 
him. He has never been rocked to sleep; whenever 
cross or fretful in the day, we have known that 
sleep Avas all he needed, and into his little bed he 
has been promptly plumped, and covered with a 
loosely knit afghan, tented on a light framework, 
which we call "the extinguisher.'' Here shut 
away and entirely unnoticed he soon learned to 
give himself up to his own reflections, and then 
presently to sleep. Thus we have kept down the 
first great nuisance of ordinary infancy, namely, 
egoism and a habit of howling for attention when 
no attention is really needed. But social relations, 



188 

and those of the gayest, he has constantly with 
both his parents. We take up and make into pla3 
with him each idea of his own. We have shown 
him some finger-plays. In the main we Leave him 
to originate his own amusements. 

From the keeping of stomach and bowels abso- 
lutely healthy, by a regular and reasonable ex< rcise 
of their all-important functions, not only has the 
boy been free from irritability, and spontaneously 
happy and self-amused, sometimes quiet, and some- 
times jolly to overflowing. But the second great 
nuisance of those ordinarily attending baby-raisi 
namely, sour stomach followed by colic, was elimi- 
nated. A secondary result of this entire regularity 
of functioning at the upper end of the alimentary 
canal was that a like regularity set in at the other 
end. That is. at the thirteenth week he began to 
have but one daily passage of faecal matter, and 
that soon after breakfast. Of the approach ^( this 
act he notified his mother without fail, and th 
after we had no soiled diapers. .Movements were 
received on pieces of old cloth, and (doth and all 
5ed into a pan of ashes, or the fire, when we had 
one. When, at six months, we put him onto cow's 
milk, mixed with thin graham porridge, to supply 
the extra nourishment demanded by rapid growth, 
he went up to two movements per diem— morning 
and evening. Thus, the third great nuisance 
of diaper washing was eliminated, in its more disi 



189 

greeable feature. Eructation of curds, rashes, 
colic, diarrhoea — these common ailments of ordi- 
nary babyhood, we have never had a sight of. We 
believe it due solely to strict adherence to the four- 
meals-a-day plan. These consist of an early break- 
fast, a later breakfast, a dinner about one o'clock 
and a supper between six and seven. The bath 
comes at any convenient time. On pleasant days, 
even in winter, he is outdoors, well wrapped, in a 
chair, for hours, and often has a long nap there. 
He was provided, by my own needle and penknife, 
with an ample fur sleeping sack, into which he is 
securely buttoned every evening and laid in his 
box-bed, on a trunk. He never sleeps with his 
parents. According to the coolness or coldness of 
the nights, additional covering, in the shape of soft 
blankets and shawls, is laid in on the box, their 
weight supported by the edges of the box. He can- 
not uncover himself, but he can kick freely, and 
use his arms. We dressed him, from the first, in 
the " Gertrude''' system of baby clothes, introduced 
by Dr. Grosvenor, of Chicago — all woolen princess 
garments, with shirring strings at the lower hems, 
by which they are made closed bags, ending just 
below the feet; warm, but allowing of kicking ad 
libitum. At five months — it being winter time — he 
went into short clothes, including solid suits of 
warm flannel underwear, shirts, drawers and long 
snug-fitting stockings. He has never had a cold. 



L90 

His muscles, from the first (due to his mother's 
gymnastics), were firm and- active, like those of an 
adult. At the fourth week he surprised us by 
suspending his entire weight from his hands and 
arms one morning. Legs, neck, back and hands 
particularly have developed steadily in power and 
quickness. There was never any fat deposited — 
that avant courier of so much infant mortality- 
he is, and lias been all along, a rosy, plump, dim- 
pled baby, or boy, rather, for babyhood very early 
lost its hold on him. Too often children se< m 
finally to emerge from the miseries and ailments of 
a tedious infancy and to take on, at last, individu- 
ality and distinct character at the second or third 
year. This child, per contra, having never had a 
sensation of illness, or of pain, save honest hunger, 
has seemed to be a happy little boy almost from 
the first, alert or thoughtful, shouting or cooing, 
laughing and crowing, especially after his meals 
and movements, studying the world of things about 
him hy the hour, keenly appreciative of colors and 
of music, and preferring some sorts to others, his 
face crossed by vivid changes of expression, wonder, 
merriment, surprise, reveri< — all as perfect a1 Bix 
months as ordinarily seen at three years. Be has 
good color from head to foot, is pah 4 when hungry, 
but the moment a bit of food is down expands to his 
most genial flow of spirits. Immediately after his 
day-time naps his cheeks are regularly flushed and 



191 

rosy. His spirits become more pronounced toward 
each evening, reaching their high-point of talking, 
laughing, crowing and squealing at just about bed- 
time. He keeps it up for some time after being 
tucked away for the night, till sleep masters him; 
and begins where he left off early next morning. 
All this is good physiology. So happy day succeeds 
happy day, and we trust and hope that many good 
tendencies are getting a fair start in a harmonious 
and spontaneous beginning of this great work of 
growing up that we are fostering but not forcing. 

At One Year Old. — Everything continues as 
begun. Teething at times causes slight transient 
fretfulness, and more cold water is drunk. The 
bowels remain absolutely regular. The all-night 
sleep (never "put to sleep, v ) and two day-time 
naps are unchanged, in all thirteen or fourteen 
hours of sleep per diem. On warm days he needs 
and gets plenty of cool water to drink, often two- 
thirds of a pint at a time. Talking, standing and 
creeping he has attained by his own unaided in- 
itiative (this on principle). As for amusements, he 
invents his own always, except when engaged in 
social exchange with his father and mother, and in 
these, too, we are careful that he makes at least 
half the advances. 

On particular occasions ne comes in need of 
mothering — and gets it. On all others he simply 



192 

lives with two big but highly sympathetic play- 
fellow- ; and he has developed separate lines of 
play and talk for each. Of ten he chooses to alter- 
nate as between two poles of attraction, turning 

his face to his mother's for her sympathy betwe< d 
shouts to his father, or vice versa. From week to 
week we notice that the older plays are mostly 
dropped one by one. and fresh ones invented. All. 
however, are real and vivid to him, because all ins 
In early prospect we have but two more points t<> 
compass. Perfecl health in all respects he has in- 
tact. Self-control and self-sufficiency, both in 
amusing himself and in enduring lesser ills, such 
as bumps and mild degrees of hunger, he LS getting 
as fast as growth permits. But obedience and re- 
sponsibility will soon be needed in Ids repertoire. 
Negative obedience his mother is obtaining already 
in response to "No. no." and shakes of the head. 
Positive obedience will be the far more vital thing 
to secure — just as soon as lie can help in little 
ways. Here we hope to make him responsible as 
far as can be for the welfare, safety and amuse- 
nieni of younger playfellows, whether brother or 
sister it is now too soon to say. 

C. W. Lyman, II D. 

New Castle, Col. 






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